1000's of people + London transport = absolutely nothing to worry about...

I'm back from my trip to the Excel Centre to register and get my running chip thingy. Sadly, not of the potato variety - though I was hankering for some chips and mayo when I was there (very continental of me!).

We had to take a mainline train that was thankfully delayed so we got an earlier one at off peak prices (God bless South West Trains) . This was followed by another lovely experience on the tube, followed by two DLR trains.

Obviously, as this is London, there were delays. We got registered pretty quick, had a mooch around the exhibitors (nothing thrilling there), picked up a free goody bag (more later) and set off back.

The first DLR went the wrong way for one stop befiore returning to where we got on, before continuting the right way. Then changed for another, which was possibly the most wobbly journey of my life.

Then tube to Waterloo (where I realised I'd lost £15!!) and a half hour wait for a train at which point I temporarily mislaid Ben in M&S, as the after queuing to pay for ages I realised my salad had sweetcorn in it and had to start again. When will people realise sweetcorn has no place in a salad?!

Philistines.

The train to Chertsey takes a billion years so we thought we'd be clever and get a fast one to Virginia Water to overtake the one we'd missed.

Unsurprisingly, this didn't work, so and we had a half hour wait for the Chertsey one, so we went for a brew.

Again, unsurprisingly, we messed this up and missed the next train so opted for a taxi.

Now, as you're not my travel agent, you're probably not hugely interested in this, but there are two important lessons here:

1. The journey on Sunday morning to the start (using public transport) will be hellish. There's no way trains won't break down. Not a chance in hell. Also, with only small crowds going to Excel today, the stations were pretty rammed. Knowing my luck, I'll break my leg as I'm leaving the station to get to the start when someone falls down some stairs onto me.
   
2. If it weren't for the blue line painted on the road to mark the route, it's highly likely that two well-educated (I've got a 1st for god's sake) 20-somethings would still be trying to find the finish line in August, having run thousands of miles and being particularly British and refusing to ask for directions or give up.

Both important lessons, I'm sure you'll agree.

The upshot to all this is I'm not actually thinking about the actual run much at the moment, more about getting to the start line on time and in one piece.

I suspect it's my subconsciousness' way of protecting me from actually realisin that I've got to run 26.2 miles in a couple of days.

How very kind of it!