Running the London Marathon
Run past the world-famous landmarks of London in one of the world’s largest marathons
The London Marathon takes place in April each year. It starts on Blackheath in the southeast of the city, passes world-famous landmarks such as the Cutty Sark, Tower Bridge, London Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the Houses of Parliament, and then finishes on The Mall outside Buckingham Palace. It’s a sightseer’s dream.
With a field size north of 55,000 people, the London Marathon is one of the world’s largest marathons and is the world’s largest single-day charity event, raising tens of millions of pounds each year for a variety of good causes.
The London Marathon is also part of the Abbott World Marathon Majors, a global race series where runners attempt to complete all events and earn a highly converted Six Star Medal.
So, if you’re considering running the London Marathon, here’s what you need to know.
London Marathon Application Process
The London Marathon is one of the toughest Abbott World Marathon Majors to get into, especially for overseas runners. While there are multiple ways to apply, the five main routes open are the general ballot, a charity entry, a time qualifier entry, using a tour operator or being drawn as part of the Abbott World Marathon Majors lottery. UK-based runners who are part of an affiliated running club may also be able to secure a bib through their running club’s London Marathon bib allocation, which is based on the number of first-claim members and is usually one or two bibs per club.
General Ballot
The 2024 edition of London set a world record for the number of general ballot applications for a marathon, receiving more than 578,000 entries. That record was shattered for the 2025 edition, which received over 840,000 applications. Around three-quarters of London Marathon general ballot applications come from UK-based runners — who are also offered the chance to enter a second-chance ballot if they agree to donate their GBP 59 entry fee and pay again if successful.
The chances of winning a place in the London Marathon through the general ballot — which opens the day before the race and closes just six days later — are very small. UK-based runners face odds of less than 4%, while for overseas runners (who can’t enter the second-chance ballot), the odds are less than 2%. So, while a general ballot entry is the cheapest, it’s also challenging and many people have rejection streaks going back a decade or more.
Charity
The London Marathon offers a large number of charity bibs, and minimum fundraising amounts are reasonable compared to other Abbott World Marathon Majors. Expect to raise between GBP 2,000 to GBP 3,000 for a charity bib.
Charities assist runners with fundraising, such as setting up a donations page, and communicate well in the build-up to the race. Many also offer hospitality on race day and cheer zones on the course.
Time Qualifiers
The London Marathon has two time qualifier programmes: Good for Age and Championship. However, both programmes are only open to UK residents, meaning you cannot use them if you live outside the UK.
Good for Age
Good for Age (GFA) applications are open to everyone who meets the minimum time qualifying standards. Time qualifying standards differ for men and women and by age category. For example, a 35-year-old man needs to have run a previous internationally certified marathon in 2:55:00 or less, while for a woman of the same age, the qualifying standard is 3:40:00. Qualifying standards then rise with every age category.
It is also possible to use a GFA entry if you’ve run a virtual marathon and a half marathon on an internationally certified course.
There are 3,000 bibs for men and 3,000 bibs for women, and meeting the qualifying standard doesn’t guarantee entry to the London Marathon. Once all qualifying times have been submitted, the London Marathon will order applications ’fastest first’ and then apply a cut-off, similar to the Boston Marathon. The top 3,000 men and 3,000 women are then awarded GFA bibs.
Entry for GFA applications opens after the general ballot, and the London Marathon advises that if your qualifying time has a buffer of less than 10 minutes, you should also enter through the general ballot to improve your odds. For the 2024 edition of the London Marathon, GFA time-qualifying standards were tightened by 5 minutes after all applications had been submitted due to the number of people time-qualifying.
Championship
London Marathon Championship time qualifier entries differ from GFA applications as there is no maximum number of bibs. However, the qualifying standards are much tighter, and you must also be a member of a UK-based running club. But if you meet the qualifying standard on an internationally certified course, you’re guaranteed entry to the London Marathon.
For the 2025 edition, Championship time qualifying standards were 2:40:00 for men and 3:14:00 for women.
Tour Operators
Tour operator applications are similar to every other Abbott World Marathon Majors race, and you should contact companies that serve your country of residence for more information. Expect to pay somewhere in the region of GBP 5,000.
Abbott World Marathon Majors Lottery
If you’ve already run three of the other five Abbott World Marathon Majors events (i.e. Berlin Marathon, Boston Marathon, Chicago Marathon, Tokyo Marathon or New York City Marathon), you can also apply for a bib through the Abbott World Marathon Majors lottery, although again, the odds are pretty slim.
Pre-race Organisation
The London Marathon has some of the best pre-race communications of any Abbott World Marathon Majors race, with frequent emails, social media posts and guidance provided in the months leading up to race day.
A lot of the content focuses on the charity aspect of the race, as well as those running a marathon for the first time (there are a lot of first-timers at the London Marathon). Skip the official London Marathon training plan, however, unless this is your first time running a marathon. The ‘advanced’ plan was nowhere near good enough to get you in good enough shape for a strong race.
London Marathon Expo
The London Marathon expo was excellent, extremely well-organised with virtually no queueing, plenty of merchandise and lots of space.
It was by far the best expo of all the Abbott World Marathon Majors.
I arrived just after opening on Day 1 (the London Marathon expo runs for four days, unlike others that only last three days), and after filtering into the cavernous hall at the ExCel London Events Centre, I had my bib within 5 minutes.
The expo had a lot of activities and stalls, selling branded merchandise and other accessories. There was also a large events area where talks took place throughout the expo, providing advice on final marathon preparations and interviewing marathon greats past and present.
One change at the expo for 2024 was that the London Marathon gave you your finisher’s t-shirt. Usually, the finisher’s t-shirt was distributed after participants finished the race, but this change now aligns the London Marathon with all other Abbott World Marathon Majors events.
For the first time, the London Marathon expo featured an Abbott World Marathon Majors Six Star Finisher’s Wall and another wall with all London Marathon participant names.
London Marathon Start Line
The London Marathon begins at Blackheath, a large grassed area in southeast London. It’s accessible by tube and bus, and a taxi can drop you off about half a mile away from the start village.
The start line is split into four coloured zones, based on your start time, with three separate start lines (two of the colours merge into a single start line). While it can get quite windy at the exposed Blackheath location, the experience is actually very good.
There’s plenty of space to relax and warm up, the entertainment was great at keeping your nerves at bay, and there were plenty of toilets/ urinals. The bag drop was also seamless, taking literally seconds.
Of all the World Marathon Majors, the London Marathon arguably has the best start line experience.
London Marathon Course
The London Marathon course weaves its way through London, starting in Blackheath before heading downhill into Greenwich and looping around the south side of the River Thames. At about halfway, you cross the world-famous Tower Bridge, run around Canary Wharf, and then head down Embankment past the London Eye, into Parliament Square and then on to the final stretch to finish on The Mall outside Buckingham Palace.
The elevation gain is 246ft (75m), so while the London Marathon isn’t exactly hilly, there are a fair few ups and downs along the course.
Here’s what you can expect to find along the London Marathon course.
Blackheath to Greenwich
The three different start lines mean the first mile or so of the London Marathon is reasonably okay crowd-wise. The race starts on a slight incline before dropping steeply around 2.5 miles in at Woolwich. One section has a downward gradient of -5.7%, giving you some idea of the drops.
As the start lines begin to join together, the London Marathon get rather crowded — even towards the front of the pack.You also need to pay attention to the speedbumps in the road, which while well signposted, can be difficult to actually see due to their colour and the sheer number of runners around you.
Support from the off is loud and raucous, and this reaches a crescendo as you arrive in Greenwich and pass the Cutty Sark, where a seating area is erected to pack in supporters.
Rotherhithe and Bermondsey
After the racket of Cutty Sark, the crowds die down a little as you pass into Rotherhithe and Bermondsey. The support is still strong along this section, but there’s nothing really of note to contend with.
Tower Bridge
One of the highlights of the London Marathon is crossing Tower Bridge. Like many bridges in races, it’s steep to get on it, with a similar decline on the other side.
The support along this section is incredible, and the noise is deafening. There are lots of photographers on Tower Bridge, so you need to put on your best running face to get some memorable snaps.
Shortly after crossing Tower Bridge and heading into Wapping, you reach the halfway point of the London Marathon and enter Canary Wharf.
Canary Wharf and Isle of Dogs
A seven-mile section passes through Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs, passing by the large buildings and hotels of one of London’s financial districts, through underpasses, and along residential streets.
The support along this stretch is surprisingly strong, with hundreds coming out to cheer you on from the hotels and houses. Several bands are also based along this route, adding to the energy.
One challenge with this section is the lack of accurate GPS signals due to a combination of tall buildings and London’s generally shoddy mobile networks. So don’t be surprised if your watch tells you your pace has dropped/ sped up when you feel like nothing’s changed — it’ll likely be down to GPS issues rather than you running at a different pace.
Embankment to Parliament Square
After Mile 21, you exit Canary Wharf, head back through Wapping, and then down onto Embankment to run alongside the River Thames. The support really carries you along this stretch, which has some nasty bumps in it (8.2% gradient hill at 23.8 miles?).
When you look up, you’ll see the London Eye across the water to your left, and as this big Ferris wheel gets nearer, the race route takes a right into Parliament Square, past Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, and on to the home stretch.
Buckingham Palace and The Mall
After exiting Parliament Square, you’ve got about 800m to go, running alongside St. James’s Park. As you approach your penultimate turn, a sign tells you there’s “385 yards to go” as you pass Buckingham Palace. It’s at this point you curse early 20th century British royalty that you need to run just a little bit further to finish the London Marathon, but as you complete your final turn onto The Mall, the finish line comes into sight with Union Jack flags flanking your route.
You finish at The Mall and are immediately handed your medal and a bottle of water. Then, you are ushered towards the Horseguards Parade meeting points.
Race Strategy
Besides the net downhill section in the first five miles, the London Marathon is reasonably flat save for the few short but steep sections over Tower Bridge and at various other points in the course. The course never remains ‘flat’ for long, so you always find yourself either going slightly up or slightly down, but usually not to any extreme.
My goal for the London Marathon was to try to drop a few more minutes from the Tokyo Marathon time I had set seven weeks previously, seeing if I could run a cheeky sub-2:45. I had run 2:48 in Tokyo — which is a much flatter and easier course — so I knew it would be a challenge, but it was one I felt confident enough to take on.
My strategy was to run slightly slower than my target race pace of 6:15 mins/ mile for the first three miles/ 5k, then speed up to my target race pace. This was to avoid blowing out my quads on the downhill and was a strategy that had worked well for me when running the Boston Marathon.
After Cutty Sark, I decided to speed up again to slightly faster than my target race pace to compensate for the lost time in the first 3 miles/ 5k. Then, as Tower Bridge approached, I’d ease back into my target race pace for the rest of the race.
This strategy held until about Mile 16, when I entered Canary Wharf, before I started to slow more and more each mile. I thought it might’ve been my GPS signal, but after a couple of miles into Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs, I could tell more people were passing me, so I knew I was tiring.
I finished the race in a respectable 2:51, which was a bit off my goal time but still a decent day in the running office, especially after running 2:48 seven weeks earlier and not having trained much at a 6:15 mins/ mile pace.
Reflections
While I may have learned to smile for the cameras, I hated every single second of the London Marathon. It was the second-worst marathon I’ve run to date (after running the Dorney Lake Marathon, a field of 300 people running laps of a boring artificial lake).
I know this will be sacrilegious to some, but this was my ninth marathon in five countries and my Abbott World Marathon Majors Sixth Star, so I have a reasonable basis for making that claim.
The course was simply too crowded from the very start and got worse and worse as the race progressed, only opening up for short sections. A big issue seemed to be the way some time qualifiers were assigned to earlier start waves, and as they had run qualifying times much slower than others, they caused a lot of congestion.
Running through the streets of London was always going to be tight — they’re not exactly as wide as the streets in the Chicago Marathon or the New York City Marathon — but it didn’t help that at multiple places, the course narrowed to a single lane, causing massive pinch points.
Water stations were also only on one side of the road, so runners frequently cut across others to reach them.
I saw more people trip/ fall in the first 10k of the London Marathon than I saw in ALL of the other Abbott World Marathon Majors put together. It was shockingly crowded at times.
To put that into context, I live in London, I know the city well, but I didn’t know I’d reached the Cutty Sark until I was almost past it as I was concentrating so much on just not being tripped. That’s Cutty Sark, a ship that’s raised several metres high on a plinth above ground level!
It probably didn’t help that my race strategy was sub-optimal, too. I hadn’t trained for a 6:15 mins/ mile pace — my training pace for the Tokyo Marathon was 6:25 mins/ mile — and that extra 10 seconds/ mile really takes it out of you on a fairly undulating course. The marathon owes you nothing, and as I hadn’t trained for that pace, I didn’t deserve to run it. Lesson learned for next time.
The two positives, however, were the great expo experience and the fantastic support that lines virtually the entire 26.2-mile route. That was amazing. It’s just a shame I couldn’t enjoy it, as I was too worried about looking up and clipping someone’s heels.
So, if you’re thinking about running the London Marathon, it’s a very hard race to compete for a time goal in due to the crowing and course profile, but as an experience, I’m sure many looking to get around and soak it all in will enjoy it much better.
At the moment, I have no desire to run the London Marathon again and will gladly let someone else take a GFA bib who wants it.
If you’ve liked this race report, you can check out my other reports on Abbott World Marathon Majors Running the Boston Marathon, Running the New York City Marathon, Running the Berlin Marathon, Running the Tokyo Marathon and Running the Chicago Marathon.
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