Weekend Race Report - London Marathon 2024

Deep into marathon season, this weekend saw 6 of our athletes make the journey south to the big city to experience the 2024 London Marathon. With near perfect weather conditions they lined up alongside 50,000 other runners to take part in one of the most iconic Marathon races in the world.

With 750,000 spectators lining the streets and millions more watching on live TV the amazing Graham Dodd showed no signs of slowing down by crossing the line in an eye watering 3 hours 16 minutes, easily gaining a GFA time and immediately started planning for next years return.

Next home in aqua was Louise Siddall in 4 hours 11 minutes, saying afterwards “It was brilliant, I stayed with the 4 hour pacer as long as I could just couldn’t keep up, but still well chuffed, the atmosphere was amazing”. Louise has raised more than £600 in sponsorship for this race in support of Alzheimer’s Society plus a generous £500 from her employer which amounts to an unbelievable amount for this fantastic charity.

After a bad training fall just last week, Joanne Raynor-Johnson got herself up, dusted herself down and ran the race of her life to claim a fantastic PB, beating her previous best time set 11 years ago to race home in 4 hours 27 minutes. She spoke of her experience “It is an awesome atmosphere, it can get quite overwhelming at times but that feeling coming down the Mall, you can’t describe it”.

Next home and raising an astonishing £2367 for the Barnado charity, Natalie Lowe ran a superb race finishing in 4 hours 49minutes and speaking afterwards “It was amazing, I loved it”.

Natalie’s training partner, Martin Bell was next over the line in 5 hours 12 minutes, a superb courageous effort who said today “Really enjoyed it but feeling the legs today!".

Completing our club with a fantastic, valiant effort, the ever improving Alexander Stafford came home in 5 hours 42 minutes, commenting “Oh my, what a day, hardest thing I’ve ever done……. but maybe I’ll do another one day, just maybe!”

Away from the pain, it is clear our athletes loved every minute of this magical experience. They trained, they were strong, in control and happy to be part of it all. Of course there were times when it was tough, really really tough, but anyone taking on a marathon has a heart of a lion by default. The pain, the hurt, it didn’t bother them, it all faded into the background, they were swept along on a wave of emotion and adrenaline that is a unique experience known only to us runners.

Natalie, Joanne, Louise, Alex, Martin and Graham - they are all marathon heroes, our club mates, our heroes.

The ballot for next years London Marathon is open now, and as our friend Dave Allemby once said,

“Got to be in it to win it”.

A weekend is not a weekend unless Nadine the machine is running a marathon. This week she chose the local one over at Roche Abbey in Maltby, off-road, plenty of sludge, plenty of hills. A gigantic effort was needed and she didn’t disappoint, posting a time of 5 hours 25 and later calling the coarse “horrible”

Also in Maltby, Paul Greenwood was brave enough to tackle the half marathon, amazingly his 88th to date! Going round in 2 hours earned him a very respectable 8th place.