Getting a ballot place in the London marathon is a lucky thing. London marathon don’t publish the number of ballot places that they have, but estimates I’ve read say it’s ~17,000. We do know that there are usually ~40,000 runners - although this has been increased to ~50,000 in 2021. They do also publish the numbers of applicants they get for the ballot, and that’s well over 400,000 (at least since they stopped it being so that you had to get up very early in the morning on one specific day to even submit an online ballot entry before applications closed).

The other runners comprise those getting places in return for a large (£1000s) charity fundraising commitment, via being a ‘good for age’ or stronger runner, or via places that are assigned to running clubs affiliated with UK Athletics. In fact, it was on a club place that James ran his one and only marathon at London back in 2014 (3:20:22 for those that are interested).

James running near Big Ben

James running the London marathon back in 2014

This all equates to an ~4% change of success in the ballot every year, or that you would on average get a ballot place once in every 25 years. So when you see people saying about their 10 years of trying to get a place, then they are not unlucky. It’s just the numbers and the system; sure, maybe you could do things like not allow previous runners to apply for ballot places but numbers suggest doing that simply wouldn’t make it so you were suddenly loads more likely to get a place.

So why back in April 2019 did I decide to enter the ballot to run the London marathon? I’m honestly not sure, but a good deal of it was watching some friends cross the finish line and being caught up in the excitement, and a good deal of it was because it was so unlikely I’d actually get a place.

So, it was in complete shock at the enormity of what I was in for that made me shriek out loud when I saw the ‘congratulations’ email in October 2019. Then the hard work started…

October 2019 to March 2020

I’m not a likely marathon runner or indeed a likely runner at all; I only took up running in 2017 as part of a North Herts Road Runners (NHRR) couch-to-5k (C25K) group, and, before starting this first lot of training, I’d never run more than 10 km. However, I have been doing running on a regular basis since then, and I do feel my fitness is better for it.

My C25K group after the run

Me (back row, fourth from left) as part of the group photo celebrating a successful completion of C25K in 2017

Realistically, mind, there was never any possibility that fully running every minute of a marathon distance was going to be a sensible goal. So all along, with some help from coach Karen (thank you!), I devised training towards a run-walk plan.

I can’t begin to say I remember all of what the training was like during this period, which is now over a year and a half ago. I do remember how much of all my spare time it took, how it was an ‘exciting’ endeavour to get up Mondays after long-run Sunday and that I had perpetually sore muscles and sometimes worse hurts or niggles. Training didn’t go perfectly either; I had a cold during December 2019, which meant training had to stop for that month. I also remember being out running in some rather spectacular rain storms, although it wasn’t a particularly harsh winter.

All in all though, there were no disasters and that meant throughout January and into February, I ran my first ever 10 miles and half marathon, and, to date, my longest run ever [17.2 miles and 4:04, or ~25 repeats of 8 minute run, 2 minute walk ( Strava activity; followers only)] was in mid-late Feb. After that one, I did have quite some fun to make it from the end to the fast food place for lunch, and then an even bigger struggle to get into the car to be driven home after lunch. Anybody who thinks running is invigorating is sorely mistaken, all it ever promotes in me is a strong desire for a nap. I remember then I was still hoping that it’d work out OK to run that April; the possibility that a pandemic would lead to a postponement was still distant.

But of course it wasn’t to be, and, eventually, even the marathon organisers accepted this and a postponement was planned, with the idea to hold the 2020 race in October 2020.

Summer 2020

Immediately after the announcement of the postponement, I stepped back from running; this wasn’t hard because (a) I was bored of it, and (b) the rules were ‘essential exercise only’.

After a few weeks, and some recovery in the aches, we had the 2.6 challenge, on the original date of the marathon - April 26th. Although fundraising was not and is not a big part of my doing a marathon, I did feel it was something that would help fill the hole in what charities were able to raise left from the overall cancellations of events. Keeping it simple, I stuck with 2.6 miles - I wasn’t at my fastest ever but I definitely gave it enough to be exhausted after - it comes from the thought that even modest fundraising means ‘people’ will ‘see’ the result ( Strava activity; followers only).

Me looking exhausted

After the 2.6 challenge

A few weeks after that, in May 2020, came the ‘purple marathon banana relay’ - a virtual 10-person relay we did as part of my running group, one that was hours faster than one I’d do on my own. It still makes me smile the way the ‘banana’ got fresher as the distance went up. Those who took part will understand!

But the real marathon was starting to hover over me - if it were to be done in October, training would have to start in earnest at some point. It’s just difficult to have motivation when it is difficult to believe something will happen.

It must be exceptionally hard to organise a major event during an ever-shifting health situation, and with continued speculation as to whether there was truly any possibility of the event going ahead in person. There was talk of a marathon being done with social distancing (the joke was 40,000 people at a distance of 2 m apart, and someone was on for 80 km to get to the start line); there were ‘nearly’ promises for a decision being made on whether it would go ahead by a certain date, but never quite a yes or no. On 19th June, we got an update:

As I write, there are currently just over 15 weeks before the planned date of our 40th Race on Sunday 4 October. Therefore, on the usual timescale for our event, we are currently at the equivalent of the first week of January.
That means there is still plenty of time to train and there is neither a need, nor should there be a desire, to be at your peak fitness yet.

Maybe this rang true for a lot of marathon runners, but it didn’t for me. By then, my own feeling (and it’s not like I don’t have quite a strong knowledge of biology) was for a definite postponement being the safest thing; by the end of July, I was frustrated that a call either way hadn’t come.

It wasn’t only my preference on safety in a pandemic though that made me favour postponing - there were published rules on sporting events. These included avoiding having baggage, a requirement for social distancing during travel, no mass starts, no spectators and no handing out of medals. Some of these to me were plain impossible for London and some would have meant that the experience would have to be so diminished as to make the whole thing a very poor show for anyone for whom this was going to be a once-only thing.

A bib with the name Clare

On 6th August, it was confirmed that the 2020 London marathon would be virtual. It was also confirmed we could transfer our ‘real’ places to either October 2021 or April 2022 (I chose 2022 - we’ll come back to this later), something that was not a legal requirement but would have been heartbreaking to many if it had not have been permitted - the luck I mentioned at the start on getting a ballot place would be unlikely to strike twice.

I really wasn’t at first sure whether to participate in the virtual marathon. Even just walking with lots of proper ‘rest’ breaks isn’t quite something that can be knocked out for a given day, and I’m not usually into doing something as a ‘challenge’ as challenges can encourage you to make decisions that are not sensible (i.e. going out for 26.2 miles when you haven’t really done the training!). But eventually I decided, why not; we can’t predict the future, and to do this would be a memento of the successful hard work put in earlier in the year. And there would be a medal and t-shirt.

Autumn 2020

So roll on October 4th. My aim was quite simple, start at 8am and finish before dark. However, I hadn’t quite counted on it turning out to be the wettest day of the year!

I had decided to do the walk round the Greenway, partially through nostalgia, as it was where I’d done a lot of the earlier training, and partly because detours back to the house were possible to eat, change wet clothes, warm up etc.

I did the obligatory pre-event making of the ‘flat me’ clothes with race bib. [Although it’s only in blog research that I’ve learnt how there’s a term flat runner/flat me - before I was just “I need to do the making of these into the person shape for the photo!”.] I downloaded and set up the pre-race app. And then we were off (yep, James was with me to carry stuff).

At various location in the virtual marathon

Flat me, James and me on the virtual marathon, and me with the t-shirt later

The special app to measure and record the distance had quite fun and well-thought out positive messages from Paula Radcliff and Steve Cram for us. What’s more, and somewhat to my surprise, the app actually worked for me, and the messages played at the correct distances (although most of the day, the continuous rain rather meant I couldn’t hear them). [Mind, I didn’t actually get the app recording the correct time, but as it actually cut 30 mins off the 9:36:42 it took, I was able to update to make the official time longer without any fuss after the event.]

The first flood was on the first of my three loops, near Radwell meadows; the second flood, on the second loop at near half-way was even worse, although in a more expected location. Many many miles of trudging through the rain with very wet feet. What was great was passing all the other people in various phases of running or walking their own marathons, and, of course, those who came out to give me specific encouragement (thank you too!).

It all ended with a few loops of a local playing field, which was also fitting as James and I had done a few other virtual events there too over the year.

Spring and summer 2021

So where are we now; well, I haven’t actually been able to run much this year as I’m somewhat injured. And things are still very much up in the air, and not just with the fact we are still in a pandemic. Last week, the London organisers announced on social media that the marathon in 2022 won’t be back to April as was expected, but would rather also be planned for October.

Tweet screenshot for showing new London marathon date

I can’t help but feel emails should have gone out to those, like me, that were already signed up to run before - or at least at the same time as - these posts. Training for a marathon when you don’t usually run long distances takes over a lot of your life and this is a major change in that regard. It’s also fuelled speculation about whether this year will go ahead in about 40 day’s time, although they are just starting to announce specific plans and mitigations for the 2021 race to participants.

I’ve yet to learn full details on the plan for 2022, but after the first message, which was rather celebratory in tone, the posts have been edited or supplemented, and we have learnt that those with original 2020 ballot places will be able to transfer to April 2023. I know I chose April 2022, rather than October 2021, in the first place because, for me, winter training is preferable. As someone put it, summer is rum, not run.

But then there is a strong feeling that what is already heading towards a three-year marathon would be better without it turning into three and a half years. I’m not getting younger.

Right now, I can’t say whether I’ll be on the start line of a marathon either in a year and a bit’s time or six months after that. But, although it’s a cliche, any running I do now counts as part of the training.

To anybody running an autumn marathon this year, very best of luck, you’ve got this.

Extra shots

Credits

Thank you to those who gave permission for using their images of us.