Running the London Marathon: Mile-by-Mile

It’s the London Marathon this Sunday, and if you’re a normal person, you’ll probably put the telly on, see the live coverage, and change the channel with a shake of the head. I was once like you. Running? What’s that all about?

Well, in a twist only Agatha Christie could see coming, it turns out that the boy who could barely breathe after 400 metres of the school cross-country became a sometime runner. I’d never had any serious ambitions to run the London Marathon, but by the time I approached the age of 40, I realised that if I did, it might be an idea to act on it before my knees took on the texture of the arse end of a bag of Rice Krispies.

I’d originally planned to do the Marathon in 2019, until my not-at-all-suspiciously-planned wedding coincided with the event. I was all geared up for April 2020, definitely the fittest I’ve ever been. When I came out of lockdown, I was pretty close to the fattest. In 2020, I was aiming for a sub-four hour time. By the time I was allowed to race, my target had expanded to 4.30, a relatively conservative ten and a bit minutes per mile for my pace.

So it was that forty years exactly after the first London Marathon, I found myself in the holding area on Blackheath Common, in the world’s longest queue for the toilet. Eventually, I was called to the line, and thanks to either my prodigious memory or the pain of it all, I’ve detailed, mile-by-mile, what followed.

Looking back on the notes I made from a year ago, it's obvious I had no idea how much of a challenge it was going to end up being, going from detached levity to utter desolation within only a few miles. I've scrubbed them up and tried to inject some lightness, but even then, I can't disguise the commitment and faith in yourself you need to have to finish.

This was my London Marathon. If you're running it, or have ambitions to do so, maybe it'll give you an idea of whether or not it's worth it. If you haven’t, I’d subscribe to Disney+ before Sunday morning.

Form an orderly queue, there's enough for everyone.

Mile 1 – Blackheath Common – Shooters Hill Road: Beep one of two on the watch, thus beginning four hours plus of running, barring a miracle or disaster. Was Rudyard Kipling a marathon runner? That might have been how he kept the cake weight off; check later. I’m mincing slowly up a slope in sports gear, like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first quadrant of The Running Man. Not many people here, so I suspect this might be the spanner route.

Mile 2 – Shooters Hill Road to Queen Elizabeth Hospital: Some polite applause, mainly from families trying to encourage us all through quickly so they can drive to the carvery. An abrupt left turn towards Charlton Park corrals me through the most cliched post-war estate since they bought back Shine On, Harvey Moon. There are three runners for every foot of space, so naturally there are speed bumps, and potholes the depth of the Big Hole at Kimberley.

Mile 3 – Queen Elizabeth Hospital to Woolwich: Last stop for A&E. The fences are covered in barbed wire, which can’t be a good sign. The field starts to thin out, as does the crowd. The third mile is a psychological staging post: the end of a 5k, halfway through a 10. I’m trying to stick to my plan of ten-minute miles so I don’t cramp up and Radcliffe all over South London.

Mile 4 – Woolwich to Thames Barrier: Back into commercial London, and a great surprise off to my left: a steady stream of runners from the Greenwich start. Woolwich is the rally point for the Marathon; from here, we’re all doing the same race. Hope I don’t inadvertently fall into step with another runner and have to avoid eye contact for twenty-three miles out of embarrassment. A few low-fives from bored kids as we flood towards the Thames. No sign of the Arsenal, as Spurs fans might crow after the last few seasons.

Mile 5 – Thames Barrier to New Charlton: The A206 is a wide dual-carriageway divided by bricks, so I have to quickly decide which side of the endless divide to run on. Needless to say, the running gods decree whichever way I decide is overrun with pilgrims lost on the way to Santiago de Compostela. Ooh, there’s a sign for the Barrier turning! I’ve always wanted to take a gander at it. Consider abandoning race for three minutes of appreciative nodding through a chain-link fence.

Mile 6 – New Charlton to Maze Hill: No idea if these places actually exist outside of Dickens. A lot of pubs, with (it must be said) a few Victorian drinkers outside. But at least they are loud and cheering for each of us, so I’ll forgive any ‘kerchief thievery. Man, this road is long. And winding. Occurs to me that if this is the one Paul McCartney wrote about, it leads to Buckingham Palace. He also wrote a song about Her Majesty. The plot thickens. Or is that...Dickens?

Mile 7 – Maze Hill to Deptford Creek: My wife, who I left in Greenwich Park over an hour ago, had vague plans to walk over the park to the Cutty Sark. Optimistically, she says she will wave. Ah, the poor naif. I seriously doubt if...Holy shitballs, there she is! Randomly, I look left towards the park as I advance over the crossing to the Old Royal Naval College, and standing there is Kate! London has nine million people, with hundreds of thousands of people lining both sides of a 26-mile route, and I somehow happen to spot my only supporter amongst them. This is either a miracle or a side effect of too many High5 gel packs.

Mile 8 – Deptford Creek to Deptford: Another landmark (the Cutty Sark) down and across the creek into Deptford. The borough seems to be a place where traffic barriers come to graze. The playwright Christopher Marlowe got killed here. Everyone’s a critic.

Mile 9 – Deptford to Surrey Quays: My body has finally realised I am running a marathon. When I was a kid, this would be my cue to start walking. But today I’m keeping my pace steady. I only know Surrey Quays from The Football Factory, where Danny Dyer and his mob of hooligans come south to have a feather-duster fight with half the cast of RADA. Turn right into Rotherhithe, past a massive leisure complex with a cinema and Pizza Hut. You have no idea how close I am to running through the windows of either, like a sugared-up Wile E. Coyote.

Mile 10 – Rotherhithe: A tour of scenic Rotherhithe. I’ve dreamed of this moment. Actually, it’s nice these days, a consequence of forced gentrification. The roads are entirely tessellated and coated in crushed Highland Spring bottles.

Mile 11 – Rotherhithe: The sun’s out, there are unexpected grass verges and I’ve just run past a bloke in a Crystal Palace shirt. I may not be the world’s most impressive runner but at least I have my dignity. I’m running on a massive loop skirting angular developments built during the Thatcherite fever dream; lots of red framed double-glazing like the Copthorne Hotel in Birmingham. If you listen closely, you can hear the ghosts of a thousand wraps being snorted on the wind.

Mile 12 – Rotherhithe to Bermondsey: Finally out of Rotherhithe and into Bermondsey. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the Piper Alpha. Stinks of jellied eels (amazingly, Bermondsey has a beach of sorts). No, it’s okay. Now running along the ace-ly named Jamaica Road. My next right is Tower Bridge, and like every cabbie, I can’t wait to get north of the river.

Mile 13 – Bermondsey to St Katharine Docks: Tower bloody Bridge, matey! The symbolic heart of the London Marathon. Absolutely packed – you can feel it coming before you see it. Indeed, I wonder what all the commotion is, and before I can react I’m running over the water and streaking past the Tower of London. If you’re feeling a little defeated, Tower Bridge comes along at the perfect time. I see a bloke from the BBC coverage, but as I am quite a dull person, he is entirely right to ignore me.

Mile 14 – St Katharine Docks to Shadwell: The latter is home to the Dogs, the fake football team in Reece Dinsdale-starring hooligan film I.D. Bizarre sight of runners streaking towards me, because they have conquered Canary Wharf and are on the home stretch. After the high of Tower Bridge, this is somewhat deflating. Finish my first bottle of fluid and indulge in some kung-fu to wrestle my second out of my backpack. Carl Douglas emerges from a bus stop and kicks me in the face.

Mile 15 – Shadwell to Limehouse: Forty years ago, the Social Democratic Party announced its formation in Limehouse. In the same spot, I am announcing the breakup of my body from my senses. Oh, you silly bastard. Why did you think you could do this? It seems a common thought; there are hundreds of us grimly trudging up the slight slope of Narrow Street. In the 1800s there were dozens of opium dens here, and I could sorely do with a lie-down in one. Actually, I’m far closer to collapsing at the side of the road, but manage not to; it’s October and the wind coming off the river could damage my prospects of posing in For Her magazine.

Mile 16 – Limehouse to Millwall: Say what you like about Millwall fans, because apparently they don’t care. Go ahead, test the theory; I’ll wait. In my head, I was expecting to be marshalled through here by Sandy Gall and Kate Adie. In practise, it’s naught but a long slog down the Westferry Road. I’m hot but freezing, like the T-1000 in battered Saucony Triumphs.

Mile 17 – Millwall to Mudchute: Ah, sophisticated London with its evocative geography. Mudchute is a misnomer, given its low-rise maisonettes and repurposed brickwork. Another slope to climb, but suddenly the City is ahead, like a bunch of bars on a graph (which isn’t fun to imagine, although a bunch of barber giraffes is. God, these gels are something else, chico).

Mile 18 – Isle of Dogs: Bloody love dogs, me. Except when I’m running. And when I have to run round an island made of them. In reality, the dogs have disappeared, to be replaced with a hundred humourless skyscrapers. Maybe I could piss on one? If I did so right now, it would put a hole in the foundations like the Alien did to the Nostromo.

Mile 19 – Canary Wharf: In hindsight, and in my opinion, the hardest mile of the Marathon by far. Up and down farty little roads in the shadow of Docklands Light Railway. The paths jammed with spectators, noise, slight inclines which feel like foothills of mountains. The only thing which got me through it was spotting a man dressed like a house running for Shelter. I could never live down being beaten to the finishing line by a dormer bungalow.

Mile 20 – Canary Wharf to Blackwall: out of the Byzantine confusion of high finance into relative calm. Not many spectators as I round a massive traffic island, apart from one bloke that looks so much like that Salt Bae chancer that I bellow it at him. To him, it sounds like “sorbet”, which is an esoteric but not altogether ridiculous thing for a dehydrated runner to shout.

Mile 21 – Blackwall to Limehouse: At this point on my final training run, I had to stop in a Spar and buy a huge bottle of Lucozade Sport and another bottle of water and carry them under my arms like I’d rescued them from a burning kennel. What I’m trying to say is that anything beyond this is the furthest I’ve ever run without stopping. Acknowledging this does not bring me succour or a second wind; instead, I wonder why Buzz Lightyear pretends to be inanimate if he doesn’t believe he’s a toy.

Mile 22 – Limehouse to Shadwell: Pheidippides is supposed to have died after running one of these marathons. Lightweight! Was he hugely fat? Check later, the minute I stop seeing white spots in front of my eyes. Ha! Look at all those idiots running towards Canary Wharf! Don’t they know it’s this way, where me and this giant gorilla I’m carrying are headed?

Mile 23 – Shadwell to Tower Hill: Somehow, running becomes easier from this point. You just say, ‘screw this for a game of soldiers’ and kind of collapse forwards. I’m on a wide road with a carnival atmosphere; it’s absolutely thronged and banging, but all I can focus on is not tripping on the mountain of litter belonging to the lucky bastards who must have finished hours before me. I have been listening to an audiobook all race, Dominic Sandbrook’s Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain 1974-1979. Turns out Mike Yarwood did it.

Mile 24 – Tower Hill – Blackfriars: Here, I am pinged twice: one is in my headphones, denoting that somebody has scored in the Aston Villa-Tottenham game; the other, a ping in my right thigh, denoting who knows what? The former turns out to be Pierre-Emile Højbjerg’s opener, the latter a torpedo to my private ambitions of finishing in under four hours thirty. But now I no longer care. They can kick me across the line like a sack of dirty washing. This happened to me on my twentieth birthday, by mates who couldn’t carry me home. Consider calling them up for a very particular twenty-year reunion.

Mile 25 – Blackfriars to Embankment: A mile along the Embankment which lasts an eternity. Some parts of it come easy, some only via strolls. Even then, I still attempt to look as if I belong here, and it’s only God’s vengeful hand keeping me from dashing to glory. But I have nothing left. Any gels I try to swallow feel like wallpaper paste; I cannot sluice them down with water. Mentally I drift away into a land where I am watching this in bed. The sun is out, and I am walking serenely along the Thames. Some silly sods are having a race. If only they knew they didn’t have to do it!

Mile 26 – Embankment to St. James’s Park: I decide my running days have come to an end. Sod it, I’ll still get the medal. Who died and made this the be-all and end-all? I’m forty, for Christ’s sake. Christ didn’t even make 40! I’ve just run my longest consecutive set of miles. Sprinting The Mall. Who do you think you are, Steve Ovett? Screw that large crowd coming up. I’m going to wave sarcastically.

Oh, shit, that’s Parliament! That’s Big Ben. Those are trees. That’s St. James’s Park! I’m about to finish!

Mile 26 and 385 yards: As soon as I see those trees, it kicks in. Desire, energy, dark magic; call it what you will. Instantly, every scrap of energy I still have ignites, and I am no longer in control of whatever primitive instinct is now shooting through me.

I veer away from the stream into the deserted side of Great George Street. I glance at Parliament Square but am totally focussed, pumping my arms. As I pass Horse Guards Road, I begin to rant – “come on, come on” – over and over again. People in front wonder what’s coming, turn and look, but I cannot see them. I have tunnel vision.

Here come the markers: two hundred yards to go; one hundred. The tarmac beneath me changes colour. I look to my left: Buckingham Palace. I fly past, clicking easily into a higher gear. I don’t know where this speed is coming from. I’ve never run this fast or this clean before.

I am zen, I am flow. I am in perfect rhythm.

For the only time in my life, I am an athlete.

There is silence all around me, me and my race. I have the whole Mall to myself. I have my own private racing line, no lateral movement. It’s simply me and a long straight road. All around me are people staggering to the finish, but I’m not staggering. I’m just getting started.

Then, I look up. A set of giant digits, impassive, wink into another second, but that second no longer concerns me.

I’m finished. After 26.2 miles, months of doubt, hundreds of training miles, sweat, rain, acupuncture, stretches, injuries, falling into bed exhausted and waking up in agony, ruined Sundays, protein energy balls, tattered training kit, Vaseline, plasters on parts of my body that don’t usually need plasters, avoiding cyclists and mad drivers and playful dogs, my London Marathon is done.

Reflexively, I raise my left wrist, and press the button to stop the clock. Beep two of two, a beep which confirms to me one thing, the thing that red-faced, wheezing kid I used to be would never believe:

I’m a marathon runner.

Oh, the time? 4.19.44. Never in doubt.

Chris Stanley