It’s stretching the point a bit to say that on occasion I am a professional athlete, but tour guiding on the run is part of my portfolio career. So it was on Sunday, when I led a merry band of Secret London Runs clients on an 11-mile appreciation of the London Marathon.
The third Sunday in April has been my favourite day in the calendar for about twenty years. From my first experience of this glorious city festival back in 2005, as a volunteer water bottle distributor in Deptford, to last year’s volunteering gig in the elites enclosure, where I watched Sifan Hassan (who went on to be first woman) and Mo Farah (a disappointing tenth place his swansong) warming up nervously, my love for this marathon has grown. It’ll probably be the only 26.2 I’ll do every year until I become too slow to earn a place.
‘The great suburban Everest’ is the description the late Chris Brasher, who with his running pal John Disley founded the London Marathon in 1981, gave his new road race, which went on to attract 578,000 applications in the ballot (that’s the record-breaking number who put their names in the ballot this year, about 49,000 will line up in Greenwich Park and Blackheath on 21 April 2024). Running it is a massive challenge, as well as a joy and a privilege.
I try to prepare my clients for the atmosphere at the start, along the route and, most thrillingly, that last massive effort on The Mall. On the training run, I cut out massive loops of Rotherhithe, Docklands and the suburban longueurs of Woolwich, trotting from Greenwich Park too Cutty Sark, through Deptford and Southwark Park, across Tower Bridge and the halfway point on Heartbreak Highway, down to The Tower and Lower Thames Street, Victoria Embankment, turning right to Birdcage Walk, St James’s Park and The Mall. On Sunday I doled out Percy Pigs for energy, while talking about fuelling, pacing, Marathon heroes, including Paula Radcliffe and Eliud Kipchoge, The Wall, the Everpresents (the 45 men that became famous for running every single London Marathon from 1981 to the 2000s, although now only seven remain), and the Turbanned Tornado, Fauja Singh, who ran the race aged 100 (he’s retired from running now, but is still with us, aged 112).
All Sunday’s London Marathon talk rekindled my appetite for the training and nutrition plan I vowed to follow faithfully for 16 weeks. Unfortunate, therefore, that by lunch-time on Sunday I was feeling more than just knackered from the day’s running tour and the good -ish Hillyfields parkrun time the day before (24.45, the best on this course for more than a year)…I was, as they say, coming down with something. A big old sneezy, drippy, shivery cold, as it turned out.
Tuesday’s training was an abortive slow 50-minute run, rather than a good speed session on the track. I drove down to Alice Holt Forest, near my sister’s house, for this morning’s hour-long recovery run, but I still feel pretty ropey, because the blocked nose is preventing sleep.
Tomorrow’s easy run may be swerved if I still feel grim, but will listen to this poor old beleaguered body. On Friday I’ll be boarding a Eurostar and the new European Sleeper train to Berlin, to do a spot of babysitting. It will be a new experience to pass on my sniffles to my grandsons, rather the other way round.
Thursday 1 February: one hour easy (6 miles)
Friday 2 February: rest
Saturday 3 February: Hillfields parkrun bookended by 2 miles WU/WD
Sunday 4 February: Magic of the London Marathon Tour (very slow, with many breaks) plus added miles (14miles)
Monday: rest, Bikram yoga
Tuesday: 1hour ish walk run (6miles)
Wednesday: 1 hour easy in Alice Holt Forest (5.5miles)
Marathon Gran 