Day 120: The Eve of the Marathon

It is very almost here. One day to go. The eve of the London Marathon. One more night’s sleep – although I use the word sleep in its loosest possible sense – and then it’s time.

120 days of preparation, 120 days of early alarms, sore legs, stubborn weather and occasional negotiations with muscles that would have preferred a quiet sit down instead, have brought me to this point.

It has been a long, twisting road: early morning get-ups when the world was still dark and grumpy, runs that went on longer than sanity strictly allows, strange food choices that had me seriously questioning my life decisions and stretches of illness and injury where simply tying my shoelaces felt like a competitive sport.
But through it all, the mission was simple: prepare. And despite everything, prepare I have.

Tomorrow, 26.2 miles of London streets await me. It looks set to be a warm, sunny spring day, the sort that will lift the heart and melt the legs at roughly mile 20. But that’s tomorrow’s challenge. Today was about doing the final things right.

Bagels, Bridges, and Belief

This morning continued the noble art of carb-loading. Two bagels and a coffee disappeared for breakfast – not quite a feast of champions, but certainly enough to convince my legs they still had a fighting chance.

Afterwards came the final “loosener” run: a gentle, 30-minute jog, purely to get my body ticking over after three full rest days. No racing, no heroics – just movement. The kind of run where you focus less on pace and more on whether everything is still vaguely attached and operational.

It was quiet, steady, uneventful – exactly as it should be. Halfway through, I paused on the bridge over Swale Way. The river below glinted in the morning light, a soft breeze teasing the surface into gentle ripples.
I stood there a moment longer than planned, letting my mind wander through the memory of all those long, hard training runs: the winter mornings when frost crackled underfoot, the endless hills that felt taller on the way home, the rain that somehow found a way into my socks no matter how many layers I wore.

And there, with the breeze tugging at my running jacket and the road stretching out behind me, a thought formed – simple, certain, and stubborn: I've got this.

Operation: Do Absolutely Nothing

After the run, the day's true mission began: Stay Off Feet. In professional terms, this meant more pasta (one portion shy of requiring planning permission) and as little movement as possible.

This afternoon became a masterclass in inaction. Every small task was carefully weighed on a scale of "do I really need to move for this?" Even the cat seemed to be judging me for my dedication to the art of minimalism.

Later, it was time for the final kit preparations: running clothes laid out with the kind of reverence normally reserved for religious ceremonies, race bib pinned neatly to my shirt, gels meticulously crammed into my running belt in an arrangement that defied both logic and the laws of physics.
If anyone ever claims there’s no such thing as magic, they’ve clearly never tried to fit eight energy gels into a belt designed for three items.

Tomorrow: The Payoff

And now, here we are.
The nerves are real. The excitement even more so. All that effort, all those moments of doubt and determination, have led to this: the start line of the 2025 London Marathon.

By this time tomorrow, if all goes to plan (and my legs don’t submit a formal complaint mid-race), I’ll be writing here again as a three-time London Marathon finisher.
The finish line is no longer a distant dream; it’s close enough to taste – although to be fair, that might just be the lingering bagel.

Thank you, sincerely, to everyone who’s read along, encouraged and supported this journey so far. Training can feel lonely sometimes, like shouting determinedly into a great empty landscape. But knowing people were out there, cheering from the edges, turned it into something different.

Tomorrow, the race.
Tomorrow, the reward.