London Marathon Ballot: Ooh the disappointment

I didn’t get a place in the London Marathon 2020. I am so disappointed…in public. I even have a disappointment face for this. Secretly I am relieved and am inwardly doing a dance entitled ‘thank you god of running…that was a close one’.

If I was going to ever do a marathon it would be the London Marathon. I watch it every year and am always motivated to run (shuffle…waddle…jog) after. I even wrote a blog post on it back in April (here). Full of good intentions at the time. Intentions smentions…I think I did about one more run before forgetting the motivation for running.

What I did do, however, after a few (maybe more than a few) glasses of wine in April was to put my name in for the London Marathon Ballot. I also texted my, occasional 10K, friend and made her put her name in too. “It will be great” I said…”we should totally do this”.

This is from a person who doesn’t like to run. I can manage a 5 and 10k and have done these. Marathon’s seem a bit far-fetched for me. However I get that bucket list type feeling whenever I watch the London Marathon. There are loads of people who do it who have never ran before. So surely (my thoughts after wine) I could be someone who trains and then achieves it. On a serious note though I do find it inspiring and would love to be in it one day. If that reality ever strikes though I will be very scared!

I told my friends and family I had entered. There were eyebrows raised and comments such as “fingers crossed for the ballot”. They know me too well though and were hopeful that I wouldn’t get in. Hey…at least my name was in the game.

So you can only imagine my mixed feelings of disappointment and glee when this arrived through the door:

At least they called me a ‘runner’. That in itself is a life time achievement 🙂

I phoned my mum to give her the bad (cough) news. She shared in my disappointment with a wry laugh. I texted my running friend the photo above with the tagline “gutted”.

Move forward one day and this was the text reply from my friend:

Her tag line “FS”…I think she was swearing 🙂

Oops! We all knew that was coming. I actually feel a little jealous and hope she does it. She definitely will. So as a last gasp (god knows why but again I blame the wine last night) I have applied to a couple of charities. They have places you can get if you raise money for them. I doubt any will take me on. But who knows!

Next April if I am not at the sidelines watching then I am going to ban wine on the day of the London Marathon. I will probably apply anyway. It still is one of those bucket list things. If I ever get in I will (probably) give it my best shot.

Header Photo by Gesina Kunkel on Unsplash

Magazine photos: my own and my friend’s.