This weekend my Dad completed an amazing achievement, his second London marathon! He covered 26 miles in under 5 hours, which is mind boggling to me (I currently can't run 5km!) and we're all super proud of him!
To start the weekend we headed over to the Excel Arena/Exhibition so my Dad could register. Not going to lie, it was absolutely heaving so wasn't a fun experience and we couldn't look round the exhibition bit at all, i suspect there were many freebies missed out on!
Early on Sunday morning, the marathon begin and Dad set off on his massive 26 mile journey through London. As my family and I are obviously not locals, it was our mission to navigate to areas we had never even heard of so we could meet Dad and give him some support! Trying to pick him out amongst the thousands of runners was a challenge, thankfully Dad kept us updated on where he was with messages and photos. Our favourite way to work out how close he was to passing us was spotting Chris Evans off of the Radio who was a few minutes in front, although Dad did run with him at one point and had a quick chat - pretty cool!
Having been to support Dad run the marathon a few years ago and supported marathon runners with Oxfam, I know how uplifting, inspiring and wonderful watching this event and cheering on the runners can be. Most people have their names on their shirts and seeing them grin and wave through the pain or visibly spurred on by you calling out and supporting them is a joy!
Every time I've been to watch the marathon I've been incredibly inspired by those running, it's on my bucket list to run a marathon so hopefully one day I'll commit to it! It's always a really fun experience to go along and support the runners, we had such a good day exploring bits of London and cheering like crazy every time Dad ran past!
This year, my Dad was running for three incredible charities that are close to my family's heart; Yorkshire Cancer Centre, Dementia UK and Barnardo's. You can still donate if you fancy giving some money to those amazing charity's who's work is literally life changing! (And probably making my Dad's heavy legs feel a bit better in spirit!)
Lizzie
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Congrats to your dad, that is such an amazing achievement!
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