London Marathon

London Marathon: To be, or not to be…

Like thousands of others this year I have been on an emotional rollercoaster that is commonly known as The London Marathon.

I have tried for several years to get into the marathon via the usual open ballot but singularly failed to do so. I was starting to take it personally!! The upside though is that I’ve accumulated some pretty decent training gear as a result. So not all bad.

This year I decided to try a different route and enter running for a charity that is important to me (Brain Research UK). Miraculously, I managed to secure a place and when I heard the news that they wanted me to run for them, I was totally elated. Happy days – as the young folk say.

Then reality sank in. What have I done? How the heck am I going to raise the amount of money I pledged? Am I being too ambitious? What if I find I can’t physically do it? What if I let the people down? I’ll be honest and there were times early on when I woke up in the dead of night with that terrifying cold sweat. An amplified sense of responsibility and massive fear of failure.

After a while though I managed to get most of the panic under control. This was mainly due to being part of such a wonderful running community here at Shufflers where there are people who’ve experienced all this uncertainly and so willing to help, guide and support.

So, then comes along a massive spanner in the works. COVID19.

Training for me was a bit erratic but generally I was on course to be ticking off the longer runs and our fickle weather seemed to be settling down. As the full nature of the virus was hitting home and lockdowns were imposed, it was becoming fairly obvious that mass participation events just weren’t going to happen. All of the 10k and Half races that I had lined up were cancelled and eventually the

decision came through that London wouldn’t take place in April. Disappointing obviously but totally necessary. So now what?

For me, all motivation flew out of the window. With no social running to be had and essentially being confined to barracks, apart from maybe a daily short run, any thoughts of the marathon evaporated.

Gradually though, with some easing of restrictions and being able to have at least some limited social running, I started to sense that we are “game on” again! Now that the organisers have made a clear decision and laid out details of subsequent events, the light is definitely on at the end of the tunnel.

My situation now is that Brain Research UK have transferred my entry to Oct 2021 so, as the X Factor winner Shayne Ward might say, “That’s My Goal” (would you believe that was 15 years ago!)

…now where did I put that training schedule?

Pete McGuinness

“When I found out the Virgin London Marathon 2020 was postponed/cancelled, my heart sank. After devoting so much of my time and effort, for it to be suddenly taken away was devastating to me. I wanted to prove not only to myself but to my children that if you put your mind to something you can achieve anything. I was that determined, I even trained in the storms and flooding. I spent an awful a lot of time away from my children for about a month, this I when I needed to do my longest runs which were set in miles, not time. I must admit, I do feel frustrated when this announcement came, as I’m going to have to go through all this training again, when I was only a few weeks away from tapering”.

Lucy Bridges

‘Lucy successfully completed the virtual London Marathon on Sunday October 4. Great job Lucy.’