Is the world a vampire, or is it full of abundance? Maybe it’s both.
We are in the middle of a tough, terrible news cycle. And, yet, I ran this year’s London Marathon and enjoyed myself.
I want to tell you about it.
Important caveat: It’s not my first marathon, and I was not aiming to win it. Not at all. But I had been thinking of running it for a very long time. Every year, I enter the lottery. I even bought a clearance London Marathon sweatshirt in 2017 because I thought that, one day, I might actually win an entry.
This year, I entered on a charity ballot, meaning, I had to ask you for money. Here’s me wearing my hopeful sweatshirt at Blackheath, where I was staged to start the race. I left the sweatshirt behind. Clothing is collected by the Salvation Army for the unhoused.
Wait, you seriously real marathon?
What? Are you new here?
Yes, I know that I’m petite and older. But individuals of all shapes and sizes run marathons. Truly.
People always ask how fast I am when I tell them I run marathons and ultramarathons. Most of them want to know if they’re faster than me and could do what I’ve done. The answer? Probably not, loser.
This year, I’m running three long-distance races in total. The London Marathon was more of an experience and a tune-up. I’m based on the east coast of America, I have a busy life, and I trained for 12 weeks in temperatures ranging from 25º – 95º Fahrenheit. My goals were to take it slow, have fun, and remain uninjured, and I did all three.
The London Marathon is a BFD.
The 2026 London Marathon was record-setting on so many levels. Two dudes ran sub-2:00 marathons thanks to, well, money. (Don’t let anyone ever tell you that cash doesn’t solve a problem, because it absolutely does.)
The winner of the women’s race also set a record, with a lot less money and support behind her attempt, which is even more miraculous. There were also huge crowds and a record number of finishers. Nearly 60,000 people crossed the finish line.
I could definitely feel the size of this year’s running class throughout the entire course. I went out in a very late wave of slow runners, and while a digital watch is largely unreliable during a big race in a major city with skyscrapers, my device added another .5 miles due to bobbing and weaving around people.
A shorty on the course.
At some point, you just zone out and run. I saw Scary Spice, aka Mel C, doing a DJ set. I saw a dude in a tuxedo. I saw tons of tutus. But mostly I saw the back of heads.
There were spots on the course that felt tighter than others, including London Bridge, where I tried to offer a silly pose to the photographer. Turns out I was looking at the wrong camera, which is a classic dork move.
The hardest part of the race was in an area called Canary Wharf, and it wasn’t just tough because of the miles. I went to college in London for a bit. In February 1996, the IRA ended an 18-month ceasefire by detonating a massive truck bomb at South Quay in the Docklands, just outside Canary Wharf. It killed two people, injured more than a hundred others, and caused millions in damage to the surrounding area.
I was a twenty-something, far from home, watching a neighborhood change overnight. There were bus bombings near my campus, and I was also caught underground in Piccadilly, the London tube stop, while they defused a bomb uptop.
I have been back many times to London since all that, including extended stays while I worked with Pfizer, and running through Canary Wharf thirty years later was one of the more sober and surreal experiences of my life.
Time heals a lot.
As an aside, a really fun part of this trip to London was seeing my face on a wall before the race.
My university honored me as a ‘noted graduate’ and posted a sign in the lobby. Thirty years ago I was a student with no particular plan. On Sunday, I thought about what thirty years of showing up, trying, and forgiving yourself when you fail looks like. It looks pretty good!
Back to the race.
Throughout Canary Wharf and up through mile 22, I was able to see my husband and friends and volunteers from Cats Protection. They are a leading UK charity focused on the welfare of cats, and I raised $4500 for them as part of my marathon experience.
Since the weather was so hot, I ran through sprinklers throughout the event. It was in Canary Wharf where my sneakers were too wet and one of the blisters that had been forming actually popped in my shoe. It felt like a firecracker blew off my toe.
It took me a bit to work out the pain, but the good news is that, eventually, your foot goes numb. It was right around that time that I saw my friend Sukh, who brought me a fizzy Coke and a banana. I said hello, chatted, burped, and took off.
But okay can you wrap this up, Laurie?
Yes, okay, I’m writing this on a plane with dodgy wifi, and the first draft of this post will just have to do. Here we go.
The last 5K was all about getting it done even though my brain was like, “Walking is nice. You’re good at it!”
I did my best to compress my walk breaks as much as possible and appreciate all the other runners around me. There were people in costumes, wheelchair racers, guide runners who were assisting deaf and visually impaired athletes, and people of all shapes and sizes just getting it done.
The thing about the London Marathon is that it’s one of the largest single-day fundraising events in the world. You also see every aspect of humanity. Survivors, patients, people grieving, and others running in memory of loved ones. None of us go through life unscathed. Some of us have a harder road than others.
So, I tried to tap as many kids’ hands and posters as possible, say nice things to my fellow runners, and make a mental note to follow all the runners on Instagram who wore costumes and raised massive amounts for charity. I’m following so many new people, and it’s great.
But eventually I had to stop walk-running and just book it down the stretch, past the grandstands where my husband was waiting for me thanks to a VIP ticket, and into the finisher’s pen.
Finisher
I have no regrets about how this race turned out.
In 1996 I watched the city grapple with chaos. In 2026 I ran through a city still in chaos but with my name on a university wall.
You have no idea what life will look like. Stop ruminating. Stop predicting. Start living.
To see more photos from the marathon, visit me on Instagram.