Written by Babs Pinheiro
Can someone pinch me, please? It's been just over a month since the draw of the London Marathon places was done but I don't think I believe it quite yet that on 27th April 2025 I will be running the London Marathon as an Eagle!
I mean, I know that my name was drawn, I saw the Facebook post with the photo of Nick and Anna doing the actual pulling of the name from the bag (thank you to Paul Thomas for immortalising that moment), people I've told me to my face, but can someone pinch me, please?
Doing the London Marathon will mean coming full circle in my running journey (brace yourself for the incoming cliche). In 2018, I volunteered with a friend for the Alzheimer's Society at the London Marathon at one of their cheering squads down in Canary Wharf.
We turned up at Mile 17 JUST in time to see Mo Farah and all the elite/fast runners fly past us, but this wasn't what led to me starting to run. I had tried to get into running a few times, but it just hadn't been my thing or maybe it just wasn't my time. But that day, in April 2018, something clicked, and my inspiration came from all the people at the back who would be running the marathon in 6 hours, who looked like me and they were still going strong (or some not so strong but were moving) all with massive smiles on their faces! So, my friend Becca and I decided there and then that we'd get home and start the Couch to 5K app that afternoon and that's how it all started. We then did several races together (from a very VERY slow mile on the Mall a month after we volunteered at the marathon, laughing the whole way round to racing our first 10K in September), discovered parkrun in June and in August/September that year, I joined a running club called Ealing Eagles and my life has never been the same!
And now, less than 7 years later, I will be one of those people, on the other side of the fence, having a go at running the streets of London and who knows, maybe I'll inspire a person or two to get into running and one day they'll inspire someone else, and we all keep the world moving?
So, can someone pinch me, please? (No, not literally because I bruise like a peach )