Return to marathon training 2026

After a year off marathons, I’m once again training for Newport marathon. I ran it in 2024 with the aim of getting a Good for Age time for the London marathon. Getting a ballot place at London is pretty much impossible and I don’t know enough people to raise the huge sums required for a charity place.

As a pretty fast runner, by far my best chance of getting a London marathon place is through Good for Age.

Which just means running a marathon to a qualifying time. Then going a bit below that qualifying time.

In 2024, I ran the qualifying time and then missed out on a place by just 17 seconds. I was pretty gutted.

I’m not getting any younger. My age category is 50 to 54. I was 50 when I ran Newport marathon in 2024. I’m 52 now and I’m aiming to run a qualifying time to get a London marathon place for 2027.

This time, I’m taking no chances.

I’ve enlisted the help of a coach. She is the coach who has coached our speed endurance sessions at the running club, which have helped me reach potential I didn’t even know I had. Training with her has turned me from a ‘quite good’ runner into one of the best runners of my age in the county. A runner who is more than capable of running a Good for Age qualifying time.

But now I just need to do the training…

Training has started and I will be sharing some of my progress on the blog. But what I won’t be sharing is my exact training plan. Part of my contract with my coach is that I don’t share all the detail publicly. My plan is bespoke and it has been put together by a highly skilled, experienced and qualified coach. I’m not putting it on my blog and all over social media so people can nick it.

But what I do know is that I will be running further and harder than ever before. I know I’m capable of running that qualifying time and so does my coach. I’ve just got to put the work in and make it happen.

I will also be making tweaks to my nutrition in general and my race day nutrition to make sure I don’t get any dips in energy on the day.

The good news is that my eldest is going to be running with me. It will be his first marathon, but he’s been getting a lot faster over the last year and should be able to comfortably run my target pace. It will be nice to have the company and the extra motivation he can give me.

The other (hopefully) good news is that my husband has a place for this year’s London marathon! UK Athletics registered clubs get a small allocation of London marathon places which they can offer out to members. Our club gets two places and holds a ballot for them. The criteria for our club is that you’ve had a rejection from the main ballot, you’ve been a member of the club for at least a year and you’ve never run the London marathon before. My husband kept saying he was going to get one of the club ballot places, but it was a real shock when he did!

The reason I say it’s hopefully good news is that he got injured playing football just after Christmas, so while he should have been starting training, he was resting, walking and doing physio exercises. If he can’t train in time, he will be able to defer his place until 2027.

Newport marathon 2026 – here we come!