Robbie Simpson’s surprise finish at the London Marathon would have earned him more attention if Josh Griffiths had not burst out of the pack to be the first British man home, but the soft-spoken Scot was more than happy with the outcome after the pair looked to have helped one another into the British team.

Starting among the masses rather than the elite field, Welshman Griffiths went past all of the recognised contenders who had been told that the first two Britons would be booking return tickets to the capital for August’s World Championships as long as they had also achieved the qualifying time.

In what was his first marathon the 23-year-old duly achieved both as he went way beyond his own expectations, having set out hoping to put himself in contention for the Wales team for next year’s Commonwealth Games, but easily getting inside the British team qualifying time as he claimed 13th place overall in a time of two hours 14 minutes, 49 seconds, 15 seconds ahead of Simpson who was also well clear of those who had gone in with higher expectations Chris Thompson, Scott Overall, Jonny Mellor and Tsegai Tewelde, the naturalised Scot who was among the early front-runners but paid the price, dropping out at halfway.

Simpson was less surprised than most by Griffiths’ performance, however and explained afterwards how they reeled in Mellor who had more than a minute’s advantage over them at the halfway stage.

“I ran a lot of the time with Josh,” said Simpson, who finished in 2:15:04.

“I’ve known him for a while from mountain running and then I just saw him at halfway and he was running really strongly.

“I know it’s his first marathon and he’s pretty young, so I wasn’t sure how he’d be in the second half, but we started working together a bit, then he went by me in the last few miles and I was thinking ‘whoa… he’s flying,’ and then we overtook Jonny Mellor and I thought at that point we were first and second Brit, so I was happy. He was running really well, I just couldn’t quite stick with him.”

With Simpson’s fellow Scot Callum Hawkins having pre-qualified for the World Championships he stuck with Griffiths sufficiently to hold off another Welshman, Andy Davies, who finished just seven seconds further back.

“I think all of us went too fast at the start,” Simpson reckoned.

“Andy Davies was just a few seconds behind me and at halfway he was about 40 seconds behind, so he paced it a lot better because the group I was in was a lot faster than it was supposed to be. There was a big group of us and there were a few ahead of us who were going faster still, but we all slowed down a lot. It was just a case of who didn’t slow down as much as the others.”

That was very much the day's theme with fearsome pace-setting contributing to some remarkable performances.

After the women’s race, in which Scottish veteran Susan Partridge failed in her bid to force here way into the British team for the World Championships, winner Mary Keitany meanwhile admitted that she had followed ‘a crazy pace’ as fellow Kenyan Caroline Kipkirui led her past the halfway mark and once out on her own the 35-year-old managed to set a new 30K world record and then a new mark of 2:17:01 for a ‘women’s only’ marathon.

The only time a woman has run a marathon faster was when Paula Radcliffe had the benefit of running with men when setting what is described as the ‘mixed gender’ women’s record of 2:15:25 in London in 2003, but in holding off Olympic and World 5000 and 10,000 metre gold medallist Tirunesh Dibaba, who was running just her second marathon, Keitany beat Radcliffe’s ‘women’s only’ race record also set in London two years later.

There was a surprise win for Kenya in the men’s race too as, once the pace-makers dropped out, 24-year-old Daniel Wanjiru put in a burst that even proved too much for Kenenisa Bekele, the man widely considered to be the greatest distance runner of all-time. The veteran Ethiopian was gaining ground in the closing stages, but Wanjiru had done sufficient to damage to hold on for victory by nine seconds in an impressive 2:05:48.

All of that provided added value for Simpson as the mountain running specialist absorbed a lesson he needed to ahead of what will be a first championship marathon once his selection for the British team is confirmed.

“I need to pace it a lot better,” he admitted.

“Today I had to just go for it and try to hang on in the top two Brits, but in a championship it’s a lot more important to run an even paced race and come through in the second half.

“I was still pretty disappointed with the time. It wasn’t that fast and I slowed down quite a lot at the end, but it was just the way it had to be today.”