It's the time of year when 120,00 UK runners watch their letter boxes every day. At some point after October 1st, a magazine will drop onto my door mat. For 1 in 6, it'll be a "Congratulations, You're In" magazine, and all the hard work can begin. Months of running through the cold, the dark, maybe a bit of sunshine, recoering from illness, injuries, taking part in warm up races, eating right, drinking right, chasiong people for sponsorship and genrally boring everyone with marathon talk.
For the rest, they have a decision to make. Go for a charity place and promise to raise £1500 for the priviledge of entering the biggest fundraiser in the world (can't do that, sorry charities); find another marathon to run (did that once and went to Edinburgh instead); give up running a marathon, until next time (did that last year and ended up giving up running properly for a year). There will also be some who entered on a whim, and they'll think "thank God I didn't get a place!". I've seen some of those in the past too.
If I fail to get in, taht'll be three rejections in a row. I'm one of the lucky ones to be on the Priority entry list. I qualified having been rejected in '09 and '10, some I'm still entitled to guaranteed entry after 5 rejections. That means I will run London again , but maybe not until 2013. After then, I'll be in the hat with all the others, waiting in hope for my 1 in 6 chance. That is if I can actually get into the ballot. This year the ballot closed in less than 1 day, so it was harder to enter than it was to run it.
Anyway, the countdown has begun....
