London Marathon 2005 - My story By Fergus Malone

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On Sunday 17 April 2005, I ran the London Marathon on its 25th anniversary and for my first time. 35,680 runners started the race. I came 7,666th. I had watched a mate of mine run it last year. Afterwards over a beer he gleefully suggested to me that I should run it in 2005. No fucking way! I retorted. The most I had run at any one point up until then would have been about 6.5 miles.

I had been a serious non-participator in sports as a teenager although I recall being obliged to enter the big school run (about 8-9 miles) when I was 15. I managed to run about 2 miles of it.

Now, in my 30's the longest I had run in recent times was for 50 minutes, a touch over 5 miles for me. By last year's marathon (18 April 2004), I had been running on a treadmill for about 3.5 months as a means to lose weight. In November 2003, I had caught up with some good mates in India who remarked that my love handles were out of control. They were right and I knew it! 4.5 months on, I had lost 18 pounds or so (8 + kilos) and was feeling a lot better about myself.

I carried on running on the treadmill right through last summer 3 or 4 times a week. The odd extra pound was shed. Still, 50 minutes was the maximum I could run for. This was rather disappointing because I had been running that once or twice a week for many months.

Running on a treadmill can be extremely boring but was made bearable by ensuring I had a consistent supply of quality tunes on my walkman. I'm afraid my gym does not appear to have given much thought to its tune selection. I sought advice on how to run for an hour. The answer came back, just slow down a bit, particularly in the second half hour. It worked. That was in September. At the end of September after a particularly heavy night on the booze, a work colleague suggested (totally out of the blue) that we should run the 2005 London Marathon.

A slurred Yes was my reply. A week later I had committed to it. By the end of October I had a vague idea about a training plan and began training harder. In November I ran 13 consecutive days in the gym on a treadmill. The marathon bug had set in.

By December I had stopped smoking. I ran 13.5 miles in under two hours. Although it almost killed me, I was plagued with thoughts of a sub 4 hour marathon. From people I spoke to, completing the marathon is an event. Anything under 4hrs 30 is a feat, and anything less than that is better. By Christmas just about everyone I knew remarked on how good I was looking. Life was good.

By the end of December, I messed up and started smoking again! Why? Well I've never liked it so it must be because it's extremely addictive! I was in Thailand for a couple of weeks just after Christmas. It was so hot during the day, I went running at 2am in the morning but could not manage more than 50 minutes.

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