Nick Yates: Maasai Wariors and Puffing Publicans at the London Marathon

Sweaty, breathless congratulations to all the London Marathon runners in a week in which the chefs team outran the publicans.

"We was robbed," said Tony Johnson, Fuller's press officer and member of the London Pride publicans team that raced against the Flora chefs team on Sunday. But it's hard to argue with the facts. The chefs team, led by Michelin-starred celeb Michel Roux Jr, averaged a time of three hours and 36 minutes. The publicans managed a still highly respectable average of three hours and 47 minutes, meaning they were edged out by an aggregate 11 minutes.

What a day it was. Top athletes, Maasai Warriors, Mr Incredibles, puffing bar staff, they were all there. There was even a bloke who popped off the course for a pint of bitter at the 17 mile mark, explaining he was a member of a running club called the Hash House Harriers. This elite organisation recruits marathon runners who like to fuel themselves around the 26 miles via regular stop-offs for beer. Cheers to them!

As for me, I was sadly confined to the sidelines to watch all these proceedings after a knee injury led me to pull out of the publicans team. Consolation was provided in the hospitality area that Fullers had set up in Millwall Park, in Docklands. Thankfully, if you retire from the London Marathon through injury, you get a Willy Wonka-esque golden ticket that guarantees you entry next year.

But after experiencing, from what was otherwise some low-glamour shrub-land near Canary Wharf, some of the atmosphere the runners must feel, I can't wait until April 2009 for my first marathon experience. I've just signed on the dotted line for the Nottingham marathon at the end of this summer. I'm undecided whether to build beer drinking around the course into my race day plans, though.