Annual desire to run a road marathon
London Marathon fever
It was the London Marathon last Sunday. It was always one of my favourite weekends of the year when I lived in London, whether I was running, cheering or that time Sophie and I set off at 3am from the finish to run the route backwards.
I’m sad not to have been there this year but, if social media is anything to go by, it looked crazier than ever. Running really is having a moment, isn’t it?
It’s also my annual time to wonder: would it be fun to run a road marathon again?
I started out as a road runner. Not consciously, I just didn’t really understand that there was any other kind.
Sometimes I ventured into the woods or onto the trail by the river, and I probably thought that made a nice change from the streets. But I still saw running in the same way which was, for the most part, something you tried to do as fast as possible.
My “as possible” wasn’t fast at all - I combined a lack of natural aptitude with an inability to commit to a training plan - but I had a list of what I deemed to be acceptable times for various distances pinned in my mind and strived to achieve them, regardless of terrain.
I would have been absolutely horrified to know that the sort of ‘runs’ I prefer these days often involve being happy to average three miles an hour.