Running besties on the hop (s) Lon-done (sic) for another year, and this past four months’ training has been, for the large part, successful. Sunday’s race was hard work, and my plan to go under four hours was achieved by the skin of my teeth. 3:59.42. Good for age entry for women older than 60 is 4:25, however, so my place for 2025, and the 45th London Marathon, is secured. Unless the powers that be level us up with the men, in which case I’m a hot mess. The title refers to the conclusions that Google used to draw when I first consulted about the concept of Good For Age. A whole list of beeke ..read more

It’s a bit naff to talk about one’s ‘marathon journey’, but I did have a bit of an excursion to pick up my number yesterday at the London Marathon Running Show. It started with an early trip on the DLR and Elizabeth Line to Heathrow, where 84 Dutch marathoners were disembarking and resting their powerful legs on a posh coach, all the way across town to Docklands and the ExCel, there to register their barcode, receive their numbers, pins and kit bags and have their senses assaulted by the hard sells of New Balance, Garmin, Voltarol et al. I was their in-coach entertainment, riding shotgun next ..read more

A load of old Holkham While in Norfolk last week, carb-loading in a beer-and-chips sort of way, I was vaguely aware of what was on my Vegan Runners spring marathon training schedule, but couldn’t really be arsed to do the sessions. It’s taper time, and the plan is really to prioritise sleep (how many times have I written ‘prioritise sleep’ in diaries, blogs and running features in my illustrious journalistic past?) and keep the legs turning over in a vaguely energetic fashion. My Wednesday recovery run, for example, was replaced by a frankly far more gruelling slog around Cley-Next-the-Sea and ..read more

Bring us sunshine This was designated the highest mileage week of marathon training, cheerily ending with Easter Sunday and its customary feasting. The pasty-faced women in the picture are rejoicing the halfway point in a 22-mile Sunday long run in a rather subdued fashion. We’d been expecting Easter sunshine and lollipops and had been presented with heavy grey skies and a feeling of vague malaise, probably occasioned by the clocks going forward in a distinctly un-springy way and a sharp, biting wind whistling around Woolwich. When you’re exhausted and still have a dozen miles to run against t ..read more

The goddess, Louise Dumas, is on the left, ignore the gurner on the right It’s amusing to think that while I was grouchily sliding around Southwater Country Park in Sussex, willing the sports watch to reach that magic 21-mile invitation to Just Stop Running, Jasmin Paris was making history. Ms Paris, an ultrarunner of some repute, became the first woman ever to finish the Barkley Marathons (this is a gnarly, 100-mile vertical race that involves some quite weird rules and most competitors, if they’re allowed to enter, don’t finish). Jasmin Paris did it, the footage of her running to collapsing ..read more

Seven ages of man totem, where existential angst overwhelms me… Experienced marathon runners like to terrify first timers by muttering darkly about the race ‘starting at mile 20’. This isn’t overly helpful, when most beginner marathon plans peg the longest long slow training run at 20 miles. For me, March’s five weekends mean that the long runs go from 18, to 20, 21,22 and down to 20 again, before the taper. Ideally. However work commitments and family stuff, most notably my older sister coming to stay, the other one getting married for the third time in April, and having a lavish hen do next ..read more

Gallopers turned out in the Paddock again This time last year, reporting on the Paddock Wood Half Marathon (full name: Lambert & Foster Half Marathon, which my ex-smoker’s brain insists on calling Lambert & Butler, the name on the first pack of cigarettes I ever bought, age 15, with two school friends. We made it our task, that Saturday night long ago, to smoke a minimum of six each from the magical silver pack), I was reasonably sanguine about my achievement at this stage of the marathon training game. This year I was four minutes faster, with more weeks of training time to go before ..read more

Always a pleasure,  Poole Where were all the other veteran women, last Saturday? Down by the seaside, at Poole parkrun, this one managed to trot in as first V60 (30th woman) out of 816 runners. I ran a modest 24:38, which is not fantastic for this fast, flat run. I am usually trumped by at least two other impressively speedy mature women. Still, I’ll take that. The Saturday run was bookended by long, slow miles, as has often been the case in this marathon training block, as my plans have been scuppered by events banging into each other and the ideal of the long, marathon-style Sunday run ..read more

Disgusting of Tunbridge Wells You don’t need your voice for running, but you do need it for delivering guided tours. That’s why I’m sitting at this laptop instead of standing under my umbrella holding forth about Dame Louisa Brandreth Aldritch Blake in Tavistock Square. The sitting and typing feels like a treat, but I’m awash with guilt as my poor husband has had to take up the slack and lead my tours as well as his own. He draws the line at the running ones, which is why I must retrieve this AWOL voice before Monday, when I have a private client who wants a mile-by-mile commentary on the Lond ..read more

Ready, steady…always tricky to time the picture mid jump 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 ..read more