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Whilst locking up the house last night, I noticed the postman had wedged a package behind our storm doors. Annoyed that they’d not at least tried to ring, I dug it out and wondered who on earth had sent me a fleece. I’m afraid I’ve reached free-garment overload with all the free t-shirts I get as a runner and a techie.

Only after a moment of silence that must have been quite noisy in the way that important moments are, did I realise this was the official are-you-in-London-2009 Marathon letter. So after ripping open the package, the magazines words of “It’s not over yet”, and “You have been unsuccessful” stared back at me. 

Oh well. According to wikipedia, in 2007, as many as 125,000 people applied to run, but only 49,963 applications were accepted. So that’s quite a ratio, especially given there are charity places allocated out, good-for-age runners, and places made available to running clubs to take out of that figure. So my chances were always slim, and I really don’t know if I fancy trying to raise money for charity – the minimum figures for guaranteed entry are quite high. Oh, and I rather like my running club top

So as I decided some months ago that I would run a marathon of some sort, I’ve today applied to run the 2009 Edinburgh Marathon, which is a bit easier to get to, still has places, is much smaller, and according to their publicity at least, has a fast course. It’s also very popular with my running club, so there’ll be a good number of people to train with. Plus a hotel we rather like is a short train journey away from the finish line, and it has rather good spa facilities. Which I expect will be very welcome indeed after the event.

I’m probably still going to have a go at London 2009, through my clubs allocation, but as I write that I’m wondering if that’s going to be such a good idea. I quite like the idea of a smaller race (If 11,500 participants is ever considered small? Compared to London it is!) for my first marathon, and perhaps leaving the ballot to people in the club who want it more. Plus the Edinburgh entry is non-refundable…

No matter. That’s still some months off. In the meantime I suppose I need to have a think about what sort of time is reasonable to aim for in this, and all the other distances I’ll be running next year.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 9:46 am and is filed under Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.