Should you enter the London Marathon ballot?

A lot of people will have watched the London Marathon at the weekend and have been inspired to take part. The ballot closes soon with prospective runners finding out if they’ve secured a much coveted spot in October.

But before you throw your hat in the ring, there’s a few things to consider.

If you’ve never run before, or have had a stop-start relationship with running in the past, picking a big goal to work towards can be a huge motivator to get out and train consistently. But because you won’t find out if you have a place until October, I see many people who delay starting running because they’re waiting to find out the ballot result.

So instead of being motivated to get out a few times a week over the summer months, their trainers still gather dust in the cupboard until the autumn. They’ll deal with the training if they get a place.

If you dream of running, enter the ballot, put on your trainers and start running consistently today. Pick a 10k or half marathon to target come October, so if the news is that you didn’t get a place, oh well, you’re already running and enjoying it.

Maybe you’ll find another race (there’s plenty of other marathons out there). But if you do get lucky in the ballot, you’ll have already built up a base that will see you in good stead for marathon training.

I advise all the runners in my running group to enter the ballot, because I know they’re already training.

This year, six members of my running groups ran and finished the London marathon. I also had one-to-one and online coaching clients and those I’d written training plans for running, taking the number of runners I helped to the finish line up to almost 20.

Bar two, they all had one thing in common: they hadn’t just started running in January, they’d been running regularly before they started training for this race.

So, yes, enter the ballot. But also start running, or recommit to it now. Even as a complete beginner, you could be running a half marathon by the end of the year, which means you’ll already be half way there come January.