"London Marathon 2025: Getting in Shape Again for the Ultimate Running Challenge!"

Weathering the Shift The countdown is getting serious now. With just under two weeks until race day, every run starts to carry a bit more weight, a few more questions and a lot more checking of the long-range forecast. Today, however, it wasn’t race day weather that caught me off guard—it was the sudden shift in the here and now. The morning arrived with a stubborn blanket of drizzle and the sort of damp that seeps into your enthusiasm as much as your socks. With the rain showing no signs of packing up its things and leaving, I waited it out. Eventually, at 12:30pm, I set out for a tempo run—my first proper one in quite some time. Tempo sessions aren’t just about pace; they’re about mindset. They ask questions like “Can you keep this up?” and “Whose bright idea was this?” over and over again until your legs answer with action or rebellion. Fortunately today, they leaned toward action. The Tempo Test The run started with a 10-minute warm-up, gently navigating my way towards the High...

Two weeks. That’s all that stands between me and the start line of the 2025 London Marathon. My training plan has now turned a corner—gone are the drawn-out endurance runs where time stretches like cheap elastic. In their place? Base level runs: shorter, steady, and kinder to the joints, muscles, and any other parts of me that regularly file complaints. It’s a bit of a sore point (quite literally) that I lost two weeks of training. First, illness. Then, a back injury that felt like it had ambitions of its own. Because of this, the classic 20-mile training run—the holy grail for many marathoners—remained firmly in the realm of dreams and myths, like unicorns or affordable petrol. But, as with all things marathon-related, there’s no absolute truth. Some plans demand a 20-miler, others call it unnecessary. I’ve spoken to runners of all stripes—marathoners, ultrarunners, strange mystical ironfolk—each with their own wisdom. And almost all of them agree on one thing: speed work and interv...