This Sunday’s London Marathon — the 45th — could be the biggest marathon in the world, with 56,000 runners. A large number, for sure. Until you compare it to the attendant crowds, which number possibly as many as 750,000 souls. That’s a lot of people for just one race. It does make you wonder, sometimes: why does anyone bother?
It is such a very long way to run. The marathon famously killed the first person ever to attempt it. While admittedly shoe technology is better now than in 490BC, there’s only so much a shoe can do. It’s a killer distance, literally. Before you reach that hazard, you have to train for months, spending hours out on the roads, or the trails, or in the gym. You have to spend money on the kit, travel, race entry and other essentials.
