The London Marathon must be at or very near the top of most runners’ bucket lists. It certainly has been mine for many years, but I have never been lucky with the ballot.
My only previous marathons have been Brighton in 2018 and 2019, both following London ballot rejections, and so it has been every year since.
Early December last year I missed a Harriers Tuesday session and hadn’t remembered that was the night of the draw for the Club’s London place. When I received the email from Peter later that evening telling me I had got the place I was over the moon. Christmas really had come early!
I started a marathon specific training plan almost immediately which gave me 20 weeks to race day. Having had lots of interesting chats with Yiannis over time about the importance of easy running, I had in the last year read the 80/20 Running book by Matt Fitzgerald and was making an effort to factor Zone 2 runs into my weeks, so I adopted a training plan based on the 80/20 principle. Net result was that I was running almost every day and my weekly mileage increased quite significantly, but much of the additional work was easy miles building aerobic base. The two Harriers sessions each week fitted into the plan well. The only downside for me of the increased mileage was learning first-hand about Runners’ Knees! I think what it has taught me for next time
and ongoing training is to swap out a couple of the easy runs each week for cross-training (again as Yiannis advocates), and although I was doing strength and conditioning work, to do more.
Liz was a bit concerned that despite feeding me up I was losing quite a lot of weight, so after some research she bought a copy of The Runners Cookbook by Anita Bean. We now use it all the time. It includes really good nutrition advice including race week and race day plans, and lots of recipes. We recommend it.
Towards the end of the training plan, the big test that it was working was the marathon simulation long run. I used the Lydd 20 Mile for this, four weeks out from the Marathon. Objectives were to test shoes, kit and nutrition in race conditions, and to run for an extended time at ‘marathon pace’. For me not having run a competitive marathon for seven years and most of my training block long runs being easy paced, my greatest worry was that my target marathon pace was unproven, and I didn’t know how it would feel over an extended period. Fortunately, the run went well, and I came away feeling a bit more comfortable with my race plan.
After that, the big week soon came around! Race numbers must be collected in person from the Running Show at the Excel Arena, so I went up on Wednesday, the first day of the show, hopefully before it got too hectic. It was busy but not horribly, so I collected my race pack and premature ‘finisher’ T-shirt, and then had an enjoyable time looking around the show. There was an interesting rotation of guest speakers, including my new cooking guru Anita Bean who gave a great presentation on marathon fuelling. While in London I also checked out our Saturday night hotel location, my Sunday morning cross-London travel plans and timing, and booked somewhere to eat on Saturday evening. I know that for many people it’s not possible to get to London before race weekend, but if you can, do; it takes so much stress away from the weekend.
We travelled up on Saturday morning and London was already a buzzing Marathon City, really busy, and it seemed everywhere I looked people were carrying those clear bag-drop bags with running numbers inside or wearing running club tops.
Sunday morning, race day, was another level. I left the hotel in Canning Town at 7:00am and all platforms and trains were packed with runners, everyone really happy and excited to be there, so a fantastic atmosphere. The sea of thousands of people walking through Blackheath village up towards the Heath was quite a sight.
On the Heath the organisation was fantastic. Massive colour coded start areas with strict security ensuring only the right colour bibs got in, lines of baggage trucks and toilets as far as the eye could see!
My start wave set off at 10:00 and we shuffled for about 10 minutes until we reached the timing mats and were away properly. We merged with the other start areas at around 3 miles, passed the Cutty Sark at 6 miles, and at around 9 miles I managed to spot Liz and our daughter Chloe amongst the supporters which was lovely. We crossed the River Thames in style over Tower Bridge just before the halfway point and then headed out east on a 10 mile loop to the Isle of Dogs and back, with runners from earlier faster waves passing us on the other
side of the road on their way towards the finish. When we got back to Tower Bridge again, we were more than 22 miles in and not far from that iconic last couple of miles along The Embankment, Birdcage Walk and finally The Mall. I’ve watched that final stretch so many times on TV, to be running it myself was an amazing unforgettable experience even though I was a bit tired by then!
The support through the entire route was fantastic. The noise and sheer number of people lining the course was amazing, really uplifting.
Running the route also gives you a real appreciation of the scale of the event, not just the road closures and vast people management task, but the water, Lucozade, Vaseline & gel stations and toilets every few miles catering for 60,000 runners. Incredible. Massive thanks and kudos to the army of people who pull that off.
So how was my run? Well, the positives are that my first and second half splits were quite close, there was no ‘wall’, and I felt good enough in the final miles and at the finish to really enjoy it. So I take from that that the months of training paid off, I got nutrition and hydration before and during the race about right, and my race strategy was also about right.
The only negative for me is that I was about 10 minutes slower than I planned/hoped for. My pace was 10s – 15s/km down on Lydd pretty much from the start despite heart rate and effort levels feeling about the same. It was a warmer day, and I know we all vary from day to day, but I also think that the sheer volume of runners of all different speeds you are sharing the space with does make it much more difficult to lock into and maintain a steady pace.
But on balance, fantastic! One of the most memorable days of my life, and certainly my number one running experience. A brilliant day, thank you Canterbury Harriers for the opportunity.
And if I don’t get to run London again, I will never forget the year that I did, thanks to Sebastian Sawe and Yomif Kejelcha making history. Amazing to have been on the course when it happened.
My ballot application is in for 2027!
This was a post by guest author Gary Robertson. Please see also the 2026 London Marathon results for the Harriers.
