The world comes to London

The London Marathon was this Sunday, if you weren’t aware. In my neighbourhood, it is impossible to escape as every route goes through the village, both at the top and the bottom. Our local Parkrun group supplies a set of volunteers for one of the start points. So, being an early bird anyway, I volunteered to arrive at 6:30am on a Sunday to assist the more than 59,000 runners at the start of their 26.2 mile journey.

I learned before I even hit Blackheath walking. One, the stewards are already there at 6am, lining the roads. Two, there’s the reverse night marathon, where over 1,000 people ran the route, starting at the Mall at just after midnight, and ending in Blackheath. Medals and everything. I ran into three of them on my way. They were headed to get breakfast and go home. Considering they had been loping along in the dead of night, they all looked surprisingly chipper.

Three, I am unable to recognise anyone due to a few things: if they are out of context (say, in running gear) and are below a certain age, I have no idea. My facial recognition skills are poor on a good day. So, we had a lot of people who are celebrities go by and nope, I was clueless. Plus, everyone’s so busy getting folks ready for their run.

I probably did see Sabastian Sawa (first sub two hour marathoner), but I was busy admiring people’s Puma rainbow trainers on the start line, as well as chatting about those gel packets they all have. And then getting out of the way.

The thing about this type of volunteering is that it’s slow to start and before you know it, the day is done and off you go. You do meet such interesting people. I did chat with a woman from Merrick, New York, which is 20 minutes from where I grew up, who was running. There was one woman who was on marathon 64. Every single one of those 59,000 or so had a story. We even got one wave to do a Mexican wave with us.

I went home, sunburnt, and put my feet up after 12.7km of walking. Couldn’t even imagine doing the 43km, which is what the marathons are. But will definitely try and volunteer again. A grand day out.

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