Once again I ran this year’s London Marathon for the Lavender Trust. Many, many thanks to all those who sponsored me. Donations can still be made here:
In my albeit amateur opinion, conditions on Sunday were perfect. The weather was a bit chilly with a fresh wind but the rain held off so that once you got a few miles into the race you were cool and comfortable. I suspect this helped a lot of runners from the mass starts to put in good personal times. Alas, I wasn’t one of them, finishing about 4 minutes slower than last year in a time of 3 58 28. As I said last year, sub 4 hours is a pretty respectable time. I always said to myself that I wouldn’t really feel that I had ‘run’ a marathon until I had done it in under 4 hours and I only succeeded at my fifth attempt. It’s worth pointing out though that my performance was only average for my year group, men between the ages of 45-49. Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, stormed round in 3 31 35 and he is in the 50-54 age group.
My performance against older age groups was even more disappointing than last year. For the record:
I was beaten by 186 men in the 60-64 age group, the 186th being the wonderfully named Terry Onions who managed a time of 3 58 22.
I was beaten by 61 men in the 65-69 age group.
I was beaten by 17 men who were 70 or over. This is 9 more than last year. This year 150 70+ men finished the course compared to 138 last year.
I was beaten by 21 women in the 60-64 age group.
I was beaten by 4 women in the 65-69 age group.
Once again, happily, I managed to hold of the challenge from the 70+ women. However, the fastest 70+ lady was only about 6 minutes behind me and this year, there were 44 70+ women finishers compared to 33 last year.
It would be interesting for someone to go through all the London Marathon results going back to the very first one in 1981 and chart the increased participation and improving performance of the older age groups. I remember that the media made much of the late great Madge Sharples when she completed her first marathon in 1981 (was it London?) aged 64. She carried on running into her 70s and often featured in the publicity that went along with the build up for London. Thirty-odd years on such an achievement is not worth a special mention, so ubiquitous has it become.
In October 2014, the NHS published its Five Year Forward View. In this document, it set out the challenges facing the NHS in the coming years and outlined its proposals for meeting them:
‘we live longer, with complex health issues, sometimes of our own making. One in five adults still smoke. A third of us drink too much alcohol. Just under two thirds of us are overweight or obese.’
It goes on to make clear that the NHS will not be able to meet these challenges, even assuming the most optimistic future funding envelopes, unless it starts to take prevention seriously.
So at a time when the London Marathon saw more entrants than ever before and with the breaking of 3 world and 6 course records, the country is facing the ticking time bomb of mass preventable ill-health which threatens to overwhelm our tax payer funded, free at the point of need, Health Service. Clearly we are a nation divided, with some cohorts never being healthier and fitter and some, because of bad diet and lifestyle, destined to die younger than their parents. Bearing in mind that a disproportionate number in the latter category inhabit the lower echelons of the income distribution, many of the solutions to the problem will lie with policy to tackle poverty, poor educational outcomes, poor housing and rising inequality. For those of us engaged in this noble pursuit, it is worth remembering that, although some problems are very big and may take a long time to solve, we can set a small example with our own lives. After all, it is better to light a small candle than rage against the darkness.
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