Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

The London Lottery

It's that time of year again, when the Runners World message boards start to fill up once again with "Has your cheque been cashed? On what day? Did you bequeath?" discussions. That's right - the deadline for ballot entry to the London Marathon has passed. We're into those few weeks between the close of entries and the letters going out. Depending on their fortunes in the ballot, tens of thousands of people will be receiving either a perky magazine saying "Hey! You're in! Cool!" on the cover, or a magazine with a picture of a dejected-looking dropout on the cover and lots of patronising advice about how you can still run another marathon combined with a zillion adverts from charities looking to get rid of their Gold Bond places. In fact, it's quite likely that the Google adwords at the top of the main page will fill up with various adverts for charities looking to get rid of GB places once this entry appears.

Such is the depressing reality of attempting to enter the London Marathon (sorry, the Flora London Marathon) as just another mediocre racer who wants to run in club colours and not have to raise a four-figure sum of money for a charity to get a place. It works like this. Some entries are allocated to charities, who pay several hundred pounds per entry. These are called "Gold Bond" places, and are usually passed on by the charities to would-be participants in exchange for a pledge to raise a certain non-trivial amount of money. Some people who are rich enough to do so just accept a Gold Bond place and write a cheque themselves for the large amount of money necessary to do so, while others use it as a way of persuading people to sponsor them in the hope that they'll be able to raise the necessary funds. It's basically a good-natured form of charitable blackmail, and in its defence it raises a whole lot of money for charity every year.

If you're fast - and given my age and sex that means sub-3:00 in the last year or so - you can apply for a guaranteed place under the Good for Age rules. If you're really fast, you can get a championship place where you get to line up at the front with Haile and Paula and Hendrick and the lads. Also fair enough - after all, the London Marathon also doubles as the British marathon championships.

But if you're in the middle - if you're a casual (or committed yet not fast enough for GFA) racer who just wants a chance to enter one of the best races in the world, which has a course that's famous for being fast and flat and with plenty of potential for personal bests - you're stuffed, and have to throw yourself on the mercy of the ballot. The number of ballot entrants always far, far outweighs the number of ballot places available, so most people generally assume they aren't going to be successful. There are a few consolation prizes thrown in - if you choose to bequeath your entry fee to the race charities if you're unsuccessful your chance is slightly improved, and the ballot is weighted slightly depending on your projected finishing time (I put down 3:30) and the number of times you've been unsuccessful in the last five years. If you're unsuccessful five years in a row, you can claim a place anyway. But it's still a pretty depressing exercise.

There are also places available to clubs for distribution to their members as they see fit, but as there are many people in my club who are far more deserving than I am (as they do a lot more) I wouldn't consider myself qualified to apply.

I really don't like this system. The people who lose out are, basically, people like me - enthusiastic but not-fast-enough-for-GFA racers who enjoy what they do, but who just don't have the time or inclination to go through the charity grind just to run a race. Slower people - the ones who just want to do a marathon because it's a good way to raise money for charity, or the ones who are walking or who don't worry too much about their times anyway but are doing it with friends - are perfect for taking up charity places. There are corporate and supporting body places as well, none of which mere mortals have a chance of getting (although some of those get sold on the black market to the highest bidder, a price far more than the £26 affiliated entry fee). But the mediocre racers like me who are keen as hell to have a go at the London course, know that we've definitely got a lot of potential for improving on our current PBs, and just want to enjoy running one of the world's classic races have to go through the miserable experience of repeated rejections in the ballot just for the slightest chance at lining up at some point in the future. It seems that you're allowed to treat London as a race if you're elite or GFA, but other than that - hey, it's a fun-runner's world, everyone's a winner, and why would anyone want to be so selfish as to just run it without even putting on a bunny suit and carrying a bucket?

My opinion is that it's an awful system, but I can't really think of too many ways to make it better. It does need a rethink, though, as right now you've basically got only a small chance of getting into the race in a given year if you're in my position. It's uncharitable and unkind and generally unpleasant of me to think so, but I can't help but find myself thinking that the people ambling around with their friends in 6 hours could have done that any time, and didn't really need to do it under race conditions...

And yes, it does look I was unsuccessful again in this year's ballot, in case you were wondering what sparked this rant. My cheque was cashed on 2 November, which by previous years' records appears to be the date that unsuccessful (but bequeathed) entries' cheques were cashed. And yes, there are other marathons out there - I've run a couple of them already - but for reasons mentioned above, I'd really like to have a go at London.

Posted by mpk at November 7, 2005 4:51 PM