It all started here

I hadn't realised the letter had arrived.  In its opaque plastic wrap it looked like a motor catalogue.  I might have left it piled up with the other unopened bank statements and advertising brochures, but my husband had got a parcel with a letter too - saying he hadn't got a place on the London marathon, but please accept this nice jacket instead.  He wanted to know where was my letter?  Rifling through all the ignored mail, we found the distinctive red plastic.  I ripped it open and found the acceptance certificate - I had a place on the London Marathon 2013.

I used to run, what feels like a lifetime ago, before thyroid cancer, before kids, before gaining 30 pounds.  Not real long distance running - I'd run for an hour before breakfast, usually covering around 7.5Km.  I thought vaguely about trying to enter a 10K, but then the above-mentioned events intervened, and by the end of it all I was an overweight, overtired Person Who Used To Run.

But for reasons best known to himself, my husband volunteered to run for SeeAbility in the 2012 London Marathon.  I had no desire to join him, but I enjoyed helping him fundraise, and got a tremendous buzz from seeing him finish, in 5hours 29minutes.  We'd dashed all over London trying to catch up with him - managing to meet him near the Cutty Sark, missing him at Tower Bridge, spotting him from a DLR platform, cheering him on in the north Docklands, and finally shouting like mad from the grandstand on the Mall as he sprinted for the finish.  The atmosphere was utterly contagious - all these great charities and causes, swarms of excited supporters, all those exhausted, heroic runners coming in as the Virgin DJ played rousing tunes.  Each was announced - including a runner for Sikhs in the City who was over 100 years old.  Apparently he had declared that this would be his last marathon - because he wanted to "concentrate on shorter distances and faster times."  I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking that to even be alive, much less making clever remarks and running a marathon, aged over 100, would be a miracle for me.

So when the opportunity to enter the ballot system came up shortly afterward, my husband had no difficulty persuading me to join him in entering.  The chances of winning a ballot place are pretty slim anyway.  I don't think there was any rational analysis of this decision - it just floated in on the continuing feel-gooditis from the 2012 event.

And now I have the letter, and I've got to follow through.  Okay - I don't have to.  But I'm going to.  It's not something I've always wanted to do.  But the time is right for many reasons, even though the euphoria of last year's race is barely a memory.  I've got 29 weeks to prepare.