I woke up nice and early on Sunday and quickly downed my porridge. I arrived at the gym just before 9.00 and hurried to the one rowing machine with a pm3. The aim was to try and complete the marathon as close to 3 hours as possible and I duly set off pulling 2:07 to 2:08. The heart rate steadily rose to 128 where it held for about an hour. The half way mark was reached in just over 91 minutes which was slightly slower than intended but I felt comfortable with a heart rate at 132 - still below my UT1 threshold. This is a considerable contrast to the Paul Sims charity marathon last October where my heart rate had exceeded 140 within 10 minutes forcing me to slow down. The next 10k passed fairly quickly and the predicted time was hovering around 3:02. At 35k I was still fairly comfortable with none of the usual burning pain in my backside by this stage. My heart rate had risen to 137 (just above my lower UT1) reflecting dehydration. I started to wind up the pace but then things began to go wrong. I started feeling sick and had to stop while dry heaving. This happened three times more over the final 7k including a 20 second stop with just 600m to go. It had been really frustrating watching the predicted time dropping from 3:02 to 3:04. I finally limped home in 3:04:25.5. This was 2 minutes inside my previous best which was really pleasing but also disappointing as I felt I could have done better. Oh well there is always next time !