The London Marathon, I had the best time, but not the best ‘time’.....
- Andy Wright
- 1 hour ago
- 6 min read
I was absolutely delighted to fulfil a lifelong ambition this last weekend when I finally got to take part in the London marathon. After 15 years of London ballot rejections I finally got lucky by having my name pulled out of the hat in my running club draw (at the 6th time of asking), and although it was unlike anything else I’ve ever done, I have to say it was worth the wait.
I’m 59 years old and I’ve run 9 marathons previously, the first in 2010, and then 8 more since 2015. I have run them well, and I have run them badly, and I know very well what both of these things feel like. I’ve learned from my own good and bad experiences, I’ve taken on board loads of advice over the years from friends, strangers on twitter, AI, and a whole range of experts, and feel like I have built up my own personal wealth of running knowledge from 15 years and approximately 15,000 miles.
I worked as hard as I ever have during this latest training block, and although I accept that as each year passes my age is now more of a factor, I was in the best shape I could be - I’d done more than ever with hydration and fuelling strategy (having had two recent bad experiences), I’d added some more strategic ‘effort’ runs to my well tested routines, and my best running buddy had utilised AI to design a more tailored plan than I’ve previously had. On our longer training runs we’d talked endlessly about tactics, and mantras, as well as everything that could go wrong and the mitigations we’d taken, everything possible to control the controllables! Two particularly long and gruelling training runs proved beyond any doubt that I was comfortably in sub 4 hour shape…..
I had an A target (sub 3:50 which would be a lifetime best) and a B target (sub 4 hours) but I also had given my loved ones a promise (effectively a C target), and that was that I would enjoy the experience and run with a smile on my face, and get to the finish in one piece and with a pulse. My wife had seen me in a really bad way after a 30km cross country race in Sweden last year, I’d failed to fuel or hydrate adequately and pretty much had to be scraped off the floor at the end, and my last marathon experience in Leeds in 2025 saw me in a similar condition at the finish, cramped up, being sick, and unable to stand unaided. In contrast though, just 6 months previously, in October 2024, I’d run the Yorkshire marathon in 3 hours 50 minutes (only a few seconds off my best ever time), so I know there is some running life left in me!
So I think that the best way around to explain my race (and the reason for writing this) is to tell you my finishing time and then tell you why I think what happened happened, as I have reflected a lot since getting back from London. My finish time was 4:12:52. Old, grumpy non-philosophical me from a few years back would have been upset with that - but I have totally overcome those feelings, my overwhelming emotion is that I have taken part in the London Marathon, and so even though I know I have a much quicker marathon left in my 59 year old legs, I wasn’t disappointed - here’s my honest reflections on what happened and why -
My first mistake was that I took very literally a piece of advice I had heard from multiple sources for both this race and loads of others , which is one of a number of variations on ‘everyone sets off too fast, don’t set off too fast - you think that you won’t but you still will’ etc. This is great advice for first time marathoners and inexperienced runners. I know how to pace 1:55 for a half, and that was what was in my head, but I was so focussed on preserving energy and not flying out of the trap that I actually did the opposite - I wanted to reach 10km in around 54 minutes, and I’d clocked over 56:30 by that point (and I knew I was going to need a loo stop between 7 and 10 miles) so even after the first 10km I felt like I was close to being outside 4 hour pace.
The second big piece of advice that I heeded was about weaving - don’t be the guy that runs in and out of people weaving through traffic - the problem with London, as I have now discovered (and since read about) is that it is so congested for the entire length of the course that it is impossible to get into any kind of running rhythm because you are continually either stuck behind one, two, or even a wall of people running slightly slower than you, or you are part of a wall of people in the way of someone slightly faster than you - so unless you are prepared to do at least some weaving then you’re going to inevitably run much slower than your target pace because you will just spend time behind someone slower and be forced to run at their pace. Also, I was astonished to realise, as each mile passed, that my distance travelled started to increase relative to the mile markers - in other words I was getting the message from my watch to say I’d clocked, 9, 10, 11 etc miles, increasingly significant distances before the official mile markers. So my watch congratulated me on completing the marathon distance a little way past Big Ben (in 4 hours 5 minutes!) but when I crossed the finish line and stopped my garmin, according to that I’d completed exactly 27 miles……..that’s weaving! The most distance I have ever measured previously on an official marathon course was 26.39 miles.
I went through half way in a little over 2 hours - at this point I had to make a choice, I had to either get my head down and make a conscious effort to go faster (which would involve more weaving and the stress that inevitably generates) or just sit back and enjoy it, and take no notice of the clock. I decided to just savour the atmosphere and enjoy the moment of running the biggest and best race in the world, as per my C target. This was not about ‘giving up’, this was a combination of being sensible and also being realistic. If I’d got around in 3:59 and collapsed, no one would care that I’d broken 4 hours - I would have finished slightly higher in the standings, I’d have had 2 hours of considerably more suffering and mental breakdown than I actually did, and for what?
Every marathon that I have ever done previously, there is some inevitable congestion at the start and then at any point between half a mile and three miles the course spreads out, you find your rhythm, and you run. If it’s flat, you can get into an even paced groove and it feels great, then it gets hard, then it gets really hard, then you want to give up, and you either do or you don’t, then you finish and you go home. Every one of my 9 previous marathons have followed this exact pattern. London, in contrast, was like being a participant in the biggest parade in the world, where you’re carried along at a pace not really of your choosing by a combination of the people around you and the amazing crowds. I’m absolutely delighted to have experienced it, but I feel a bit embarrassed and to be honest a bit naive about the targets I’d set for myself. In hindsight and to be honest, having conversations with runners who had previously done it, I’d heard that it “wasn’t a PB course’, but of course I didn’t think that applied to me!
So, in conclusion, I had the best time, but not the best ‘time’. The organisation of the event is, in my opinion, fantastic. The logistics all worked perfectly for me, everywhere’s busy but there are plenty toilets, the pen system is well managed, the baggage system at the start and finish worked seamlessly, I even got my medal presented to me by my own Local MP! I’ve come away from London with two further ambitions - I still think that I have a sub 4 hour marathon in me and I hope to hammer away at achieving that (on a different course!) after my 60th birthday next January, and I will continue to throw my name into the London ballot for the next few years but if I am ever fortunate enough to be drawn out, I’ll dress up, raise money for a Charity, and treat it like the 26 mile party that it appears to be!
