Thursday 11 October 2012

What the heck have I done...

I've heard all sorts of statistics about the likelihood of getting a place on the London Marathon. I'm not going to lie, when I originally applied in May 2012 I'd heard it was 1/8. "Great", I thought, "I'll probably be one of those lucky 87.5% who get it all: the opportunity to brag that they were mental enough to apply in the first place and the oh so sweet inner thrill that they wouldn't actually have to do it after all." The website announced that we wouldn't find out if we had been awarded a prestigious place until October that year. I smugly waited for October to arrive, sitting on the couch and eating Dominos and Toffee Crisps and watching endless episodes of Modern Family. By the time August rolled around I'd heard you had a 1/4 chance of getting a place. By the time September reared it's ugly head I'd heard it was a 1/3 chance and was a little bit sick in my mouth...

Don't get me wrong, I had good intentions somewhere deep down. My rather wonderful aunt had decided that in her 50th year she was going to run the London Marathon AND run the London Marathon she did in a fantastic time of 4 hours. In all the banner-waving, patriotic, shouting-until-you're-blue-in-the-face excitement of watching her pound the historic pavements of London I sort of forgot that she was really rather fit and had been running for years. I'd even been there to cheer her over the finish line of the Cardiff half marathon years earlier. However, like many other Londoners I should imagine, I got completely swept up in the romance of it all and decided that I too should, would, MUST run the London Marathon. And like many idiots like me, I applied for the 2013 one less than 2 weeks later.

Now is probably the right time to explain that I exaggerate a lot. Whilst never expecting to get a place on the London Marathon I did want to take up running and this was just a pipe dream which gave me the kick up the arse I so desperately needed. I'm 6 feet tall and have been told I look "athletic" but the dark reality is that I am really quite unfit. The level of unfit where 2 flights of stairs make me a bit out of breath, 3 flights of stairs make me a bit red in the face and 4 flights of stairs leave me emerging from the stairwell looking like the girl from The Exorcist. I've made feeble efforts to increase my fitness over the years such as attending a grand total of 1 yoga class and buying a Davina McCall exercise bike from Argos. I would sit on it watching University Challenge whilst painting my nails. Funnily enough, I didn't see any improvement in my stair-climbing ability.

However, I couldn't ignore the little voice of doubt in the back of my head that whispered to me: "What the heck are you going to do if you actually get a place in the Marathon". Naturally the first thing I did was work out how long it would take me to walk it. I did some maths and came up with 7 hours (not too shabby). In fact, when applying the online form asked me how long I thought it would take me to run it so I did what all first-time runners do...I entered the amount of time that it took James 'Arg' Argent from TOWIE to run it. Well, if he can do it in 6.5 hours, surely I can too?

In the early days of October whilst relaxing at my parents house I received my first bit of bad news. A friend of mine revealed via Facebook that his 2013 London Marathon application had been rejected. I immediately checked my inbox and saw that I had not received an email either way. 3 days later, my Facebook timeline was riddled with disappointed friends saying that they did not have a place either whilst my own inbox remained ominously empty. On Friday 5th October I caught the train back to London and stepped into my flat heading straight for the table in our lounge/dining room where we kept all our mail. There it was, placed there by one of my housemates eagerly awaiting my discovery. After my first ever attempt at applying, I had been awarded a widely coveted place on the London Marathon start line in April 2013.

I had become one of the 12.5%.

No comments:

Post a Comment