‘I just ran my first marathon as a slow runner, here’re the 7 things I would never do again’
There’s something very special about The London Marathon. The atmosphere is magic, the crowds are unparalleled and anyone who's ran it will tell you it's a seriously special day.
Marathons are an event previously left to the elites, but with a record breaking 840,318 people signing up for the 2025 London Marathon, it's attracting a whole new crowd of beginner and slower runners. This year, I was one of them.
I was born with a condition called Clubfoot, a birth defect that impacts the muscles and bones in my left foot. The affected foot lacks mobility, is very weak, and makes most kinds of leg-focused physical activity trickier than it would usually be.
I’m very lucky in that I can do most things, they just might take a little bit longer or look slightly different than they would for others. Despite this, it led to me shying away from most sports growing up, and it took until my mid 20s to discover a genuine love for exercise.
I started with strength training and HIIT, experimented with yoga and Pilates, and threw the occasional swim in the mix, but there was one form of exercise I avoided like the plague: running.
I hated it.
I tried Couch to 5k during lockdown, lasted approximately three sessions and decided it was time to hang up my runners forever. Last year, however, something changed. I was bored with my current routine and looking for something to change things up.
I signed up for the Hackney Half Marathon, and later in the year the Royal Parks Half Marathon, and although they were hard, I was proud of myself for finishing. Although I was (and still am) slow compared to more experienced runners, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of accomplishment that comes with finishing a race.
So when the opportunity came up to run the London Marathon this year, I decided to take the plunge. I was terrified, but I thought ‘why not at least try?’ and signed up.
Long story short, it was one of the best days of my life.
The training plan was gruelling at times and I pushed myself harder than I had before, but the feeling of euphoria I had for most of the race was unlike anything I’d felt before and I didn’t stop smiling for the entire race.
I’d accepted early on that I was not going to get a ‘good’ time (and with a 5:15 finishing time, by many marathoners standards I didn’t) but I truly didn’t care. While I won't be signing up for another marathon any time soon, it was an incredibly life affirming experience that I'll never forget.
I was lucky enough to do it with the Westin London, who is working with Abbott World Marathon Majors to make it easier than ever for runners to undertake their race, no matter where you might be coming from. Westin is famous for their wellness offering, so the collaboration is a no-brainer.
If you're doing a marathon in Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York City, and Tokyo, you can stay at a Westin and enjoy a weekend of marathon activations that include shake out runs, recovery sessions, curated itineraries and even a celebratory champagne after the race.
As I was doing the race in my home city, staying at the Westin made the event feel even more special and helped me get in the zone the day before, with nothing to worry about except running the next day.
Although my experience was overall a positive one, there were quite a few mistakes I made along the way that I'd urge any other beginner runners taking on a marathon to keep in mind during their training. Some are silly little mistakes, but there were a couple that could have caused serious injury or kept me from doing the race altogether.
1/ Forgoing physio at the beginning of my training
Before setting out to run this marathon, I had never been to see a physio before. Despite having a foot defect I was all too aware was likely to impact my performance, I was too stubborn to spend the money on seeing a professional.
Instead, I thought I could use Dr Google to ease my aches and pains, and a few YouTube tutorials would give me all the info I need to run the marathon injury-free.
It was about two months into my training that I realised I’d made a huge mistake. I had ongoing knee pain that was only getting worse, and I’d had two long runs in a row that I couldn’t get pasts the 20km mark without crippling pain. Once it got to the point that even an 8km easy run was too much, I knew I had to make a change or there was a very real chance I’d have to drop out of the race.
I asked around the office for any running specific Physiotherapists and was recommended The Running Room. With facilities in Vauxhall and London Fields, I booked in to see Adrian D’Costa, Exercise Physiologist, Physiotherapist, and the company’s Founder and Director.
Within the first 10 minutes of my first session, I was cursing my past self for not doing this earlier. My initial appointment was an in-depth running assessment, using an instrumented treadmill with high-speed video and pressure plate analysis to assess my gait and form. We also did a series of strength and mobility exercises so Adrian could better assess where my pain may be coming from.
Unsurprisingly, Adrian confirmed that my Club Foot was in fact impacting my running. Due to my left side being so much weaker, my right side was doing most of the heavy lifting during my runs which is why I was getting pain on my stronger side.
Based on this, Adrian gave me a series of rehab exercises to do twice a week and instructed me to pick my knees up higher at the back when I’m running.
At the time I booked in, I was starting to lose hope that I’d make it to the starting line, but from my first session the turnaround in my training was immediately noticeable.
With a couple of tweaks to my form, a few more physio sessions with Adrian and staying consistent with my prescribed strength and conditioning exercises, my knee pain had faded down to non-existent by the time I ran the marathon.
I asked Adrian if he thought seeing a physio before you undertake a marathon is something everyone should do, or more something to investigate once you’re experiencing aches and pains.
He advised that ‘if you see a physio when you have no injuries and no niggles, they can assess you from head to toe, understand if there's elements of lack of flexibility, lack of strength or lack of stability, and then provide you with a programme to make sure you're staying on top of areas where there might be some asymmetries or deficits that might show itself in the course of running a marathon’.
If I had my time again, I would have booked in with The Running Room before I even started my marathon training plan. Having regular sessions with a physio from the beginning decreases your chance of injury significantly and gave me a lot more confidence that I could do the marathon without risking long term damage.
2/ Not paying attention to how much (or little) I was eating
While my knee was on the mend thanks to my sessions with Adrian, I noticed that while my general fitness felt good during my long runs, I was starting to get dizzy and fatigued at about 15km. It felt like I had more in the tank and my body wasn’t sore but I was hitting a wall I couldn’t run through.
Adrian suggested I have a catch up with Samantha Mare, The Running Room’s in-house Nutritionist, to make sure I was fuelling properly, so that was the next stop on my marathon MOT.
Samantha holds a Master's Degree in Sport and Exercise Nutrition from Loughborough University and currently works as a Performance Nutritionist at The Running Room, where she specialises in tailored nutrition strategies aimed at enhancing athletic performance and rehabilitating nutrition-related injuries.
Before my session, she had me keep a food diary for three days so she could get an idea of how much I was eating. From this information, she was able to let me know that I had been significantly under-fuelling during my training plan so far.
I’ve been sucked into diet culture a couple of times so far in my life, but during this training plan I really was focused on improving my fitness over tracking the number on the scale, so to learn I’d been under eating was a surprise to me and had been entirely unintentional.
I asked Samantha if unintentional under fuelling was common for runners, and she said ‘most of the time it's unintentional. People really underestimate how many calories they're burning each day. A lot of the time now as well because people's work lives are so busy, they just don't have the time to be fuelling. So they don’t meal prep lunches and stuff to take them to the office and end up just snacking here and there. And that's just not sufficient to fuel the training that they're doing’.
With so many long runs in my training plan, I’d also started to get a little bit lazy with fuelling during my workouts. I asked Samantha if I should be taking gels with me and she said ‘Any exercise over 75 minutes, I would recommend someone take in some carbohydrates. So it depends how long you're going to be out on your long run. But the standard recommendations for carbohydrate intake during exercise is 60 to 90 grams an hour’.
She specifically recommended Beta Fuel or Morton 160 gels as they both have 40 grams (higher than most other brands) of carbohydrate so you won’t have to take as many on your runs.
I asked Samantha how someone can best figure out how much more they need to be eating during marathon training, and she gave me a simple method: ‘It's pretty individual specific, but depending on how many calories you're burning in training, that's probably a good way to start. A lot of people now obviously wear smartwatches, if you're wearing a heartrate monitor, it's also a little bit more accurate. It's obviously not as accurate as seeing a nutritionist, but it's quite a good gauging point to be like, ‘Okay, this is how much I've exercised today. This is how many calories I've burned. That's the extra amount of calories that I need to eat that day’. So it's all about just maintaining that energy balance and making sure that you're never creeping into that energy deficit.’
As someone who tends to put on weight fairly easily and has always been fairly careful about how much I eat, upping my food intake took a couple of weeks to get used to. The impact didn’t take long to take effect, however, which was all the proof I needed that my body needed this extra nutrition to make it to the starting line without falling apart.
I followed Samantha’s recommendations for the rest of my training plan and I felt much stronger, clearer-headed and ready for the race than I would have been otherwise. As I was fairly short on time, I opted to get Gousto boxes delivered for the last few weeks of my plan, which made keeping on top of my weekday lunches and dinners much more simple.
3/ Upping my running load too quickly and being overly committed to my training plan
As a novice runner there was no way I would have trusted myself to marathon train without a proper training plan in place. The training plan I went for, after hearing many glowing reviews, was Runna.
I’d used the app before to train for a half-marathon and enjoyed it, so I thought it would be perfect for getting me marathon fit.
After selecting the ‘marathon training plan’ option in the app, putting in the date of the race, my pace and my goals, Runna was able to recommend me a 16 week running plan that was tailored to my ability and preferences.
If there are any newbie runners who are looking at undertaking an endurance run (and can afford the £15.99 monthly fee), I really can’t recommend Runna enough.
It took the guesswork out of my training and having my plan laid out in a weekly check list helped to keep me accountable while also stopping me getting overwhelmed by the 42.195km run looming ahead.
In saying that, I was a bit too diligent with my plan at times. As this was by far the furthest I’d run before, I was militant about not missing any runs. This meant when I was sick, injured or run down I would try and push myself when I would have been better off prioritising rest and recovery.
If I’d had to miss a week because of illness I would try and make it back up by skipping straight to the next week of the plan, whether I was ready for it or not.
This was another aspect of my training that was helped by having regular physio sessions with Adrian, if what I had on my plan that week was more than I was ready for, he would adapt it and give me tips on how to better structure my plan to avoid injuring myself while increasing my fitness.
4/ Trying to keep up with my pre-marathon training social life
I’m a very social person, and the most off-putting thing about training for the marathon was how much this would be impacted during training. So initially, I decided I wasn’t going to let it impact my social life at all. I was having late nights, drinking, and seeing my friends just as often as I would have been when I wasn’t marathon training.
Unsurprisingly, this didn’t last long. My body wasn’t used to running these kinds of distances, and on a Saturday after a long run the last thing I wanted to do was go to and meet my friends for drinks and dance the night away. Also, running hungover is my idea of hell so it only took one or two dusty sessions before I realised something was going to have to give.
The fact that the majority of my training plan took place over winter made it easier, but I majorly cut back on alcohol and sleepless nights for most of my training, and my body felt a lot better for it.
I realised if I was going to do this I was going to have to properly commit, and my friends would understand if I was leaving a party early or only able to squeeze them in for a sweaty coffee after a strength session.
Having this time fully focused on a fitness goal was surprisingly fun, and although I was thoroughly ready for a regret-free red wine towards the end of my plan, I was proud of myself for how diligent I’d been.
As I was so unsure I would be able to complete the race, I also wanted the peace of mind of knowing I’d given it my best shot and not just given it a lacklustre attempt.
5/ Training in the ‘best’ gear rather than the best gear for me
One of the best parts about working at Women’s Health is the opportunity to test out the latest and greatest gear launches, and try out lots of different styles of kit. This means I have a couple of top-of-the-line shoes in my wardrobe, and I’d assumed that because these were the style of shoe worn by the best of the best that they were what I should wear for my marathon.
This was one of the first things I discussed with Adrian who (very politely) let me know that someone running at my pace doesn’t need fancy carbon plated shoes, and that actually, shoes of that ilk would actually be adding extra load to my body during my runs.
When I started wearing runners that were better suited to my pace and ability, I found my runs became a whole lot more comfortable.
6/ Not bringing enough clothes to the starting line
This is just a small one, but something that put a real dampener on the start of the day was how freezing I was on the starting line. I was so focused on getting to that start line that I hadn’t given much thought to the hour and a half I’d be spending waiting around, and just brought a thin hoodie I hadn’t worn in years I could dump at the starting line.
If I had my time again, I would have worn something thicker because speed walking around the starting grounds in an attempt to stay warm probably wasn’t the best use of energy that close to the race.
7/ Getting down post-marathon because of lack of routine
Although marathon training did take over my life for a few months, once I wasn't working towards that goal anymore I felt a bit listless with all this extra time. I didn't really fancy running anymore, but the workout routine I'd been following pre-marathon didn't appeal to me either.
After spending a couple of weeks languishing in analysis paralysis about what to do next, I decided to stop wallowing and take this time to try out new fitness classes to see what stuck. In order to do this I signed up to Virgin Active.
Virgin Active offers all the classes I'm interested in (Pilates, yoga, boxing, strength training, as well as ones like Calisthenics which I'd never heard of. Having the ability to pick and choose between such a wide range of classes helped me get back on the horse with my exercise routine and allowed me to build back a more well-rounded routine that works perfectly with my post-marathon routine.
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