For the sixth year in a row, I have received a “not this time” rejection email from the London Marathon. I even got a rejection text from them shortly afterwards to add insult to injury! Even when I learned that the London Marathon was going to become a two-day event in 2027 for the first time, which in theory would double my odds of getting in, I still maintained a pessimistic attitude about the prospect of beating those improved odds. That’s what year after year of disappointment will do to you!
The reality is that running the event over two days was never going to fully solve the problem of making the event more accessible to the one group of people who are the most discriminated against. People who have never ran in it before! Given the sheer number of people entering the ballot and the year on year increase in entries, all it does is to create the same problem twice! Elite runners aside, if a group of people have taken part in the London Marathon in the previous year, or even the previous two or three years, wouldn’t it be fairer for the London Marathon to say to those people “ok, time to give someone who hasn’t ran it before a go” and build a balloting system around that concept?
I don’t have the specific answer, but until the London Marathon can work to make its event more accessible to first time runners, whether that’s over one day or two days, I will not be entering my name in the ballot again. It’s bad enough being rejected six years in a row, but I know of many people who have been rejected ten plus years in a row! That can never be right and it needs to be addressed if the London Marathon really cares about the value of inclusivity.
On a more positive note, I will be running in the highly regarded Manchester Marathon in 2027, where the process of entry is a much more simple case of “pay us money and you are in!”.