Kenneally: I ran out of juice, I just blew

Mark Kenneally should be smiling this morning as he prepares to jet off on his delayed honeymoon.

Instead he will be feeling the aches and pains of yesterday’s Olympic marathon. And the agony wouldn’t be confined to the physical as he replays the race over and over in his head.

Kenneally finished 57th in 2:21.13 well outside the personal best of 2:13.55 set in Amsterdam when achieving this spot at London. The Kildare man looked comfortable in the opening hour but things went horribly wrong as he prepared for the final surge towards home. And he cut a frustrated figure in the race aftermath.

“I blew. I felt good for 16 or 17 miles. Then, for whatever reason, I just blew. I ran out of juice,” he said.

“The last seven or eight miles were a struggle to get home. I don’t know why, I’ll sit down and review it and think about what went wrong and try to put it right.

“It’s only my third marathon so hopefully I can improve from here but it’s disappointing. You want to get your best run out in the Olympics but, for whatever reason, I didn’t.

“I don’t want to just come and be a tourist. I want to try and get my best performances at the championships. It’s frustrating. In a week I don’t think I’m going to feel any different.”

The 31-year-old refused to use the blistering heat around central London as an excuse for his performance.

“I don’t know if you can put it down to conditions. It was reasonably hot but I don’t think that was it.

“It was just one of those things, when you blow, you blow and there’s nothing you can do about it when you’re gone. With 2k to go I was really, really dizzy and I thought I was going to have to stop. At that point it was just damage limitation.”

Stephen Kiprotich of Uganda in 2:08.01 was the shock winner of the race from Kenyan pair Abel Kirui and Wilson Kipsang Kiprotich.