Sunday was one of the few days where London isn’t awash with people who are simply out for themselves: for work, for money, for kicks. It was the London Marathon!
I’ve always thought of the Marathon as being a lot like Tim Lovejoy: an irritating channel clogger on a weekend morning. It’s also a lot like golf: highly tedious unless you are somehow personally involved.
However, I took it upon myself to wander down there and witnessed the heartwarming spectacle of nutcases powering themselves to within an inch of death for the sake of charity. Crowds were in the thousands and lined the entire course (from what I could see) to cheer the runners on.
I watched in Parliament Square where spectators expended almost as much energy as the runners with American-style whooping and air-horns were a-tooting. The irony of competitors running past the Houses of Parliament – surely the dark-hearted epicentre of bastardly greed – for a few grand for charity made no dent on their enthusiasm. The fact that they looked as if they’d been ten rounds with a wrecking ball may have though.
Two girls flipped an Ostrich-sized bird at all the runners by selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts track-side, particularly the ones from the British Heart Foundation.
I just like this photo
Wandering around the South Bank in the early evening it was easy to come across quite a few of the battered finishers who limped slowly through the crowd but wore proud smiles that they’d earned over 26 miles and the hundreds more in training.
A lot like any performance, it’s the preparation that people have to do to get to the race which is the real heroism – the training, the fundraising and the mental fortitude to go through with something that is likely to leave you requiring incapacity benefit for a month afterwards (this is not a joke – whilst at the Southwark News recently I chatted to a guy who couldn’t walk for a month after last year’s race despite having no discernible inury. His leg’s just said ‘You took the piss, we’re having a month off’.)
Well done everyone!
