It’s London Marathon again on Sunday. For everyone running, and especially first-timers, it will be a day they will remember for the rest of their lives. Alongside Harry from McFly, a team of Maasai warriers and 40,000 members of the public, Get It On listener Gavin Harvie will be using the marathon as a way to recover from an attempt at the world record for treadmill running.
“Currently the WR stands at approx 430miles, and we hope to beat that by some distance,” says Gavin. “Not only that, but as soon as the attempt is finished (successful or not), we are belting round to run Flora London Marathon as a "cool-down"!! This will mean almost 70miles each in approx 48 hours!!”
You can read more about Gavin’s attempt .
Although I won’t be running this year, I will be soaking up the atmosphere as one of the commentary team at the finish line. It will be like doing the marathon but without any of the sore bits- well maybe a sore throat after six hours of gabbing.
Paula Radcliffe has been sharing her marathon tips with and top of the list is a bit of advice I shall definitely be following:
"In the week before a race, I try to stay away from germ areas. I keep disinfectant wipes in my bag for when I have to use a supermarket trolley or something like that."
Now, you may think Paula is being a bit freaky, but if you have trained hard for three months the last thing you want to do is mess it all up by catching a cold off some manky trolley.
When I was training for London last year, I wouldn’t even let Paul touch the e-mails as he was feeling a bit sniffly. I printed out my own ‘personal’ copies…ok I now realise that was maybe taking it to far.
Hygiene will be uppermost in my mind over the weekend as the hotel I am staying at on Sunday night was featured on this week. Not in a good way.
It was part of an investigation into some dodgy cleaning practices in posh hotels. As some of the shortcuts included using dirty pillowcases to clean glasses and using the same sponge to clean the lavvie and the teacups, I will definitely be taking some of Paula’s hand wipes to London to give the room a good going over…