Image courtsy of luciferscage, Londonist Flickr pool
Benny: Don't tell the Captain but... you know that 69 year old, Anthony Gaskell, the Wirral grandad who got the fastest time for a pensioner at the London Marathon...
Luke: Yeah, he did the whole thing in three hours and five minutes. Amazing.
Benny: Well, he didn't do the whole course. Six weeks later, the marathon organisers have checked his running chip and all that and they've worked out that he took a ten mile shortcut.
Luke: Ten miles? And no one noticed?
Benny: Yeah, people at Vale Royal Athletics Club got suspicious - he would have had to run a 20km section in 40 minutes to get such a good time. Turns out, instead of going ten miles in the big loop that starts and finishes here at Tower Bridge, he just cut right across.
Luke: Did he... did he just think he was doing well and wasn't aware of the route?
Benny: Luke, how could you not know which way to go? He's saying he was injured and just cut across to get out of the race, didn't even know he was up for the award. Don't think I fall for that.
Luke: The Captain's not going to like this. So, who is the real fastest marathon runner over 65?
Benny: Colin Rathbone. 66 years old. Did the course in three hours and five minutes too, but he ran the whole thing. Training since January, even had a chest infection and got through it to win - properly.
Luke: Some pensioners are so fit. I worry about the Captain. Says he flew the whole marathon with Gaskell, but he couldn't have. He was probably doing big droppings off the top of a lamp post near the the starting line all day, like last year. He never finished the marathon.
Benny: Like Gaskell. Look, the ice cream van is back, let's see if there are any dropped cones.
They take off into the sky
