A week ago I endured the 2023 TCS London Marathon. ‘Endured’ is the right word here, certainly more appropriate than ‘ran’. The race was, as expected, hard, and on the streets of London there was nowhere to hide.
I wasn’t entirely unprepared but I was a novice. After years of not doing any running and not entering the marathon ballot, last autumn I put my name in the hat. I was shocked when I got an email shortly afterwards confirming my place. I was even more shocked when I realised the race was in only six months time! I was a dad bod doing no exercise and now I had to go from couch to marathon, fast.
I turned to Notion, as I often do when it is time to get something done. I created a simple marathon training tracker which you can duplicate for free from my website – just head over to my Notion templates page. I scheduled my training runs based on the official London marathon training plan and set up a ‘completed run record’ view to show my progress. I especially liked the little progress bar visual that really came into its own once my runs got longer. The Notion template uses the calendar view to help schedule your runs and let’s you record details such as your running conditions, distance, and injuries. I share other free templates too, many detailed on my YouTube channel, so please take a look.
So, back to my training journey. Day 1: I set off on a short run and reality giggle-slapped me in the face. I was unfit.
The official training plan kicked off in the new year but I wanted to be comfortable running 10k by then. I knew my legs were weak. Winter sickness then got in the way and I was bed-ridden. That was the end of that.
Once new year began I restarted and stuck to the plan as best I could, missing a couple of sessions due to injuries, but otherwise ploughing through. I did it all – the 5am starts and runs in the dark. I went out after work when I was tired and hungry. I ran in the rain and the lashing wind. I was splashed by cars, teased by passing pedestrians.
I spent weeks hobbling around and struggling with the stairs. Was I injured or was I just sore? Should I stop or keep going? I rolled my aching muscles on a foam roller, I stretched as far as my rigid body could, I consumed gels, and I drank protein shakes.
As the longer runs started to be introduced they would take up whole chunks of my weekend. My time was spent preparing, running, and then recovering. I was the one doing the running but my whole family was impacted.
As time went by I felt fitter and I lost weight, but I never felt confident or competent. I knew I needed more time, time I didn’t have. You can’t rush training. There is no shortcut to suddenly being able to run 26.2 miles. I would walk a little too often on training runs, I could see I wasn’t going to be able to do this but I felt I was in too deep.
Perhaps fear of failure, perhaps laziness, but I can often be found in my comfort zone. I think others know this about me too, and I was worried that if I deferred my entry, took another year to get much-needed mileage on my weak legs, then they would all roll their eyes and think I was copping out of something again.
Running the London marathon has been on my bucket list since I found out my dad ran it in 1984 with a time of 3.30. I’ve hung it over my head ever since, something I expected myself to complete, one day, in the future. The years went by and I got older. In the ballot the odds are against you and when I got a miracle place I knew this was my moment, whether I was ready for it or not.
Once the long training runs ramped up I really struggled to meet the distance required. Before I knew it it was time to taper. Despite this I pushed out one more long run in the hope of some improvements but unfortunately I still fell short of my target and my feet were now sore with blisters. All my runs to that point had been cold and wintery, this last big one was hot and sweaty and my feet suffered. The resulting huge blister and wobbly toenail turned a two week taper into a two week rest. My legs felt better for it, but I didn’t.
Too late to turn back, I was now on a six hour round trip via train, tube, and foot to ExCel London to collect my bib number. What was I doing? I was setting up to fail.
Marathon day came and my only goal now was to finish. Get my medal and take it home to show the kids. My starting wave was the final one of the morning and so as I reached the start in Blackheath in the pouring rain, crowds were leaving, queueing at train stations to head into central London to cheer on their loved ones who were already well on their way. The elite races were finishing as I started. This was to be a theme for the day.
I started well and got comfortable in my slow pace, positioning myself near runners who became my landmarks – ‘green trousers’, ‘three blokes’, ‘blue top’. If these people were near me, I was doing alright.
Crowds in the early stages were loud. Lots of encouragement and high- fives. The pavements were lined with huge piles of plastic water bottles and it reminded me just how many people had already run through earlier in the day.
It was actually very nearly afternoon by the time I got going. It had been hours since breakfast and now I was missing lunch. I knew all those capable, fast runners would be enjoying a lunch near the finish line while my wave and I were plodding our way through London, one step at a time. This was a different type of endurance.
For me, Cutty Sark was the first iconic moment, a landmark I had watched runners pass on TV since I was small. I was pleased to see I had made it on the TV broadcast too. Watching it back I realised my slow shuffling run made me look like Boris Johnson jogging from his car to his hotel when he is trying to avoid the waiting press.
I saw my wife at Greenwich, cheering me on, and I quickly realised this was going to be an emotional experience. “Suck it up and keep going”, is what I told myself.
Tower Bridge represents roughly half way and I was flagging. I had been walking a bit already but knew I had to push and run over that iconic bridge. Crowds were loud but it wasn’t packed, of course it wasn’t, runners had been coming through here for hours and hours by now.
My low point soon followed. Turning right after Tower Bridge, on your way to Canary Wharf, you see runners ten miles ahead of you running in the opposite direction. There were so many of them – a solid, pounding chorus of runners. I watched them, they were fast, they were side by side, it was electric. I was in awe. The crowd was the loudest I had heard it all day, but it was for them, it was all for them. On my side of the road we were spread thin, a mix of runners and walkers. I realised, watching those runners on the other side of the road that they were who I wanted to be, that what they were doing is what I wanted from my marathon experience. I realised at that moment that I couldn’t be them and it hurt. Had they thought the same ten miles ago when they saw the elites so far ahead of them? Perhaps, but if so, they were processing that gulf so much better than I was.
By now my energy was low. Gels, snacks, sweets, energy drinks – nothing seemed to boost me. Blisters were hurting on my feet, in places I had not had them before – perhaps down to the soggy start. I was walking almost exclusively now and I had stopped reacting to the cheers from the crowd. I was falling apart. I was staring at the tarmac.
Being at the back of the marathon means you see things the masses ahead don’t, like pedestrians ambling in the road, sometimes quicker than you are. You see mountains of plastic bottles, cups, and empty gel packets. You feel sympathy from the well-wishers more than urgent energy. I must have looked like a shell of a man. The official photos certainly paint me that way. At one point there was even a car parked in the road, engine running, a marshall shrugging their shoulders unsure what to do about it. It certainly started to feel very different to the experience those runners were having when I saw them storm past me earlier. Those ordinary people doing extraordinary things, feats I just couldn’t do. They would all be long finished by now.
I was resigned. I needed to finish, I knew I could finish, but I was going to be walking now and I didn’t care. I didn’t care what the crowd thought, what anyone tracking me at home thought. This was it, this was all I had, all I could muster. I felt ashamed.
Due to the thin field I was in the official photographers had the opportunity to get loads of amazing photos of me at the major landmarks but my miserable face and slow progress means they are hard for me to look at. If only I had found the energy to smile, or to break into a run.
I was determined to run the iconic finish on the Mall and those last few hundred metres seemed to stretch on forever. In the end it was hardly a run, but it was all I had left in the tank. As I finished I couldn’t muster a smile, nor relief, I was essentially emotionless. A kind volunteer offered to take a picture of me with my medal but I was confused and declined. I now faced a long walk with my heavy bag to find my wife. I was empty. I thought this was going to be one of the greatest moments of my life but I felt flat.
Reunited with my wife I had to sit down under a tree. Nausea was building and I could barely stand on my painful feet. Were they really that painful, surely everybody had sore feet and they all seemed to be coping fine? As violent shivering took over me we had to seek assistance from the St John Ambulance, where I spent the next couple of hours being evaluated.
By the time I was free to hobble my way to Waterloo to catch a train home, it was dark. There were no more medal wearing runners celebrating on the street as I huddled under a blanket and hobbled among the smartly dressed night-lifers.
What a long day and what a daft thing to do with it.
My time was slower than I had hoped and this bothered me over the following days. It’s all I could think about. Of course it was slow, I walked so much. I felt I didn’t deserve my medal. My legs and feet began to heal but the pain of my time intensified. I would look though the photos and spot runners around me, I’d note their bib numbers and look up their finish time – they all beat me, all of them, some of them by quite a lot. I wasn’t aiming to be quick, or even average, but I had a threshold of personal acceptability and I had crossed it.
I had always wanted to do the London marathon and I had now done it, I have a medal and t-shirt saying so, but I knew that this experience was just the beginning. Now I had seen it with own eyes I wanted more, I wanted to be on the other side of the street, running not walking. I immediately entered the 2024 ballot and even though I may never get the opportunity to run London again I now feel determined to run another marathon, wherever it may be, and get the time that allows me to hang up my running shoes in peace.
I’m starting to feel more pride. Pride in how I dragged myself out in the cold and pounded the streets when I could have been home and warm. Pride in how I persevered and carried on when I knew I wasn’t going to meet my goals. Pride in raising money for MacMillan Cancer Support. Pride in how I finished, no matter what. Everyone’s marathon journey is different, with different challenges and different expectations, and of course, different results. I endured and that’s what’s keeping my head up.
For those of you running a marathon for the first time, or those trying to organise their training, please go and grab a copy of my marathon training template for Notion and enjoy ticking off all those miles.
One foot in front of the other. Again and again. Happy running!
andyexperience 