Guest Post: Racing the London Marathon 2024

I have a guest post from Dustin about his experience running the London Marathon in 2024, his 2nd London marathon and 45th marathon!

By Dustin Benson

After a long blog hiatus, I’m back with an admittedly very much belated recap of my 2024 London Marathon. After procuring a good for age time at the Amsterdam marathon in the fall of 2022, I decided to seize the opportunity to run my new “hometown” marathon.  This would be a much different experience than the first time I ran it in 2016, with everything along the course carrying so much more meaning this time around.  

Training

After some easy running post Dublin Marathon for much of the winter, I focused on trying to do a proper training block ahead of London with my sights on another sub 3 marathon.  Winter running in London is a blessing and a curse, the temps are great and 100% manageable, the downside is the incessant rain and darkness do make it hard to get motivated some mornings.  Nonetheless I had solid early training and did focus on front loading it because I knew we had a busy travel schedule this year.  My highest mileage week was only 56 miles and fell at the beginning of March, it was a bit early for 20 mile long runs but sometimes you must work around the rest of your life.  When I’m training my primary focus is on tempo workouts, which I felt like I was hitting well.  I also tend to do some marathon pace in long runs and some up-tempo midweek runs that aren’t exactly workouts.  I did little to no short speed.  Given we live at the top of a hill, every run I do has some element of a hill workout.  That means a lot of the strength and running efficiency you gain from short speed work I basically get as a default in every run.  If I were taking a run at a full, proper, structured training block I would certainly include some but not at the volume in a lot of plans, i.e. Pfitzinger.  

In mid-March, I accompanied Jessie to Barcelona for her spring marathon. I was able to get in a few runs but nowhere near the volume I would have liked and the weather on my long run day while in Barcelona was brutal, extremely windy and rainy.   That wasn’t the only problem though, somewhere during the trip I picked up a bit of food sickness which managed to do a number on me for the next week.  It took longer than expected to get back to normal and thus another sub-optimal week after returning to London.  

(Though we still enjoyed Barcelona and Jessie had a strong marathon!)

Of course, that parlayed right into a week-long trip to Italy with Jessie and some of her family.  Again, I was able to get some runs in while we were in Rome including a fun run-sploring long run with Jessie hitting all the sights.

… but it wasn’t exactly what I’d normally be doing.  Such is life, I was more focused on making the most of the trip.  While we were on the Amalfi coast I did zero running.  One day we tried to run along the coastal road but given the volume of traffic, the extremely narrow windy roads and the lack of a shoulder, we opted out of any further attempts.  At least this time I made it through with no illness and likely more heavily “carbed” than ever, after a week in Italy! 

Once back in London I threw myself back into training but with just one week to go before starting the taper, there was only so much I could safely do.   I got in one more 20 mile run before tapering, which is a comforting bookend to training.  I ended up with three 20 milers in the bank, a fair amount of tempo work, a ton of hills because it’s just unavoidable but just one midweek workout over 10 miles.  London marathon, here we come.  

Race Day

After an uneventful taper, I was ready for London.  The first time I did London back in 2016 with Jessie we got in via a Marathon Tours package which came with guaranteed entry and a coach bus to the start.  This time I was getting the full local experience, including somehow getting myself to the start line which I found oddly intimidating for some reason.  

Since I had a good for age entry, I was headed to the green start.  London has five different start areas identified by color, each has its positives and negative but green was a new one to me.  The overground wasn’t running, per usual, so I made my way to London Bridge on the northern line to catch a TFL line to Greenwich for the start.  I didn’t fully appreciate how busy it would be at London Bridge, I started getting a bit nervous when I couldn’t squeeze onto the first train that came through, but I had given myself a good cushion of time to get there.  I managed to wedge myself into the doorway of the next train, jumped off at Maze Hill and proceeded to march uphill to the green start.  A good time to not sweat about a little extra walking on race morning because, well, you have no choice.  

The green start was smaller, but the compact nature made everything within easy reach, from the loo’s to the bag drop to the coral were all short walks.  One comment on the porta-loos, I am a huge fan of the “U” formation.  The lines each end in their own horseshoe of toilets. How have American races not come to this same conclusion in loo layout.  Its very obvious which loo’s belong to which line, no cutting, easy observation of opening doors.  But I digress.  

The only thing I didn’t like was the fact once you entered your coral, it was unclear which side led to the start line.  Of course I chose wrong which meant I was further back than I would have liked had to weave through traffic immediately after the start.  

That march you made up to the start line gets paid back in a nice downhill start.  I like to work with the course and was fine with some quicker earlier splits.  Just don’t bomb downhill, I like to cap it around 10 seconds faster than goal pace if I can.  I just don’t like be braking too hard and beating up your quads in the process. 

Having lived in London for the last year and a half, I was much more familiar with where I was on the course this time around.  The early miles are quiet but by the time you get to Greenwich proper, and the Cutty Sark in particular, the crowd support swells and provides a nice boost even if it’s too early to really need it.  

Through the screaming crowds, I managed to catch Jessie and our friend Cary cheering as I attempted a swig of water from one of the bottles (for the record, I prefer paper cups to bottles).  

Unlike the first time I ran London I noticed Tower Bridge this time around.  How I missed it, or forgot about, the first time around I have no idea, not exactly an easy thing to miss.  This is right about at the half and things were still feeling pretty good, but I knew I had the Canary Wharf section yet to come.  

The Canary Wharf portion is a bit quieter, including a very short underground section, which is fine for me as when things are going well in a marathon miles 15-20 are just cruise miles.  Typically, I have a good idea of where I’m at relative to my goal as I tabulate the number of seconds gained or lost at each mile as I run.  This also serves as a nice mental distraction.  These miles are just about not giving back any time and preparing for the last 10k.   

Come mile 20, my quads starting aching quite a bit. I was still running okay but not comfortably.  At mile 21 I hit the rainbow road section in Limehouse which I was not expecting.  Apparently a new “official” cheer section as of 2021, the music and cheering of the crowds here came at an opportune time and provided a much-needed boost.  There’s rarely a race where that last 10k is totally comfortable and London does an amazing job of crowd support during that portion.

My quads were still hurting but as you enter the stretch along the Thames on the way to Westminster you know the end isn’t too far off.  Unfortunately I also knew I was running long, my watch was ticking through miles well short of the miler markers, so a lot of the cushion I had was gone but it was hard to know just how much.  At mile 25, realized just how tight it was going to be and tried to dig deep to save my race.  There are tons of people cheering along this portion,  London really does show up, which carried me along.  I made the turn by Big Ben and headed to St. James Park which had grown significantly longer than how I remembered it…

That final turn in front of Buckingham is iconic and just as satisfying the second time around, after which you have visibility down the lined mall to the finish line.  

I was really pushing at this point but ultimately it was well worth it, I managed to save my sub 3 goal for this race. Running a 2:59:32 the hard way (with bonus mileage).

Post race I was spent and waddling around to try and meet up to Jessie was difficult.  After a few false starts I ultimately found Jessie and we made our way to Mr. Foggs to meet up with friends for a few beverages.

Overall, a really memorable London marathon experience. If you get the opportunity to run London, definitely do it! It’s a very cool marathon, and still one of my favourites of the 6 World Majors. Even without ideal training (when is marathon training ever perfect, right?) I was still proud to finish under 3 hours – barely! I look forward to potentially running London again in the future or spectating when Jessie runs it again at some point!