London Marathon memories will outlive aches for all but one of a dozen Striders

Wayne Greenfield was the first Strider home, in just over 2hrs 55, a 17 minute improvement on his 2015 performance.

He was followed by Mark Rodgers and Lorna Allison, both of whom secured personal bests under the 3:10 mark.

Allison is now within five minutes of the club’s all-time female record of 3:04 minutes set by Jane Baldwin in 1997.

Three other athletes managed personal best times; James Croft’s 3:31 was two minutes quicker than his debut performance at Paris only a fortnight earlier.

Hannah Holmes recorded a 12-minute PB with 3:32 and she even managed to run a ‘negative split’, whereby the second half is faster than the first; a very hard achievement.

Craig Williamson, who raised over £4,700 for L.I.V.E.S finished in 3:49, a massive 38 minutes faster than his first effort in Paris last year.

Jonathan Drake and Paul Dagg ran 3:31 and 3:40 respectively and Paschal Moran recorded 4:04 to claim 17th place in the V70 age category in his 139th marathon.

Clare Hardwick ran 4:56 with Simon Smith following 10 minutes later.

Jane Benson was laid low by a bug and was unable to take her place on the starting line.