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Button completes London Marathon in personal best

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Jenson Button has completed the London Marathon in a personal best time.

The McLaren driver was taking part in order to raise money for Cancer Research UK, and set himself the target of beating his previous personal best for a marathon of 2 hours 58 minutes. Button went six minutes quicker on Sunday morning around the streets of London and said afterwards he was surprised by the standard of runners around him.

“I’m proud I finished today! I did a 2:52.30, so I’m chuffed to bits with that,” Button told the BBC. “The most amazing thing is, I’ve done quite a bit of training and I sort of think I’m pretty fit, but there was so many people in front of me. It is amazing, that’s the thing here. People have put so much effort in to competing in the London Marathon and doing it for so many amazing charities.

“That’s what is so special and it’s actually a bit emotional around the route as well when you see so many people giving it their all and the crowd going crazy as well. So it was really cool.”

And Button admitted it was an emotional experience running with so many people lining the route.

“It’s such an amazing atmosphere out there and whoever they are shouting for and screaming for it’s very emotional. You definitely have a tear in your eye at many times around the course, some of it because of the pain and some of it because of the great atmosphere.”

Manor’s Graeme Lowdon and Justin Hynes are also attempting the marathon to raise money for Cancer Research UK.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.