Image by shimelle via Flickr

An advert for a show on Channel 4 caught my attention last week. The show, entitled Tracing the Marathon’s Millions, would follow journalist Ben Laurence as he looked into the costs involved in staging the London Marathon and the amount of money the race organisers actually pay out to charity.

Skip forward to the morning prior to the programme and the London Marathon issue a statement saying:

The London Marathon Limited and the London Marathon Charitable Trust Limited totally deny any allegations of wrongdoing and are surprised and shocked at the lack of evidence presented by the programme’s so-called investigative team to support this desperate attempt to undermine one of the world’s finest sporting events.

Translation; take Friday’s show with a pinch of salt.

As a runner, who, after the 25th April, will have run the London Marathon twice (raising over £4100 for charity through the Golden Bond scheme), I immediately went on the defensive and watched the show begrudgingly on Friday night. I do work in the media and I don’t claim to have a specialist knowledge on the subject. But I do know when to take a news story seriously and when to recognise a quote or a half-truth taken completely out of context to give a story a more sensationalist spin.

But after watching the show on Friday, I didn’t find myself overly aggravated. The makers of Dispatches were taking a big risk in making this programme. Back in 1991 Channel 4 were made to pay out a vast sum of money after the show made unsubstantiated claims about the London Marathon founders. This, coupled with this year’s announcement that the London Marathon has helped raise over half a billion pounds for charity since its inception, makes you wonder why the Dispatches show would target such a popular entity.

Image by aubergene via Flickr

At first the show didn’t tell us anything new. I’m sure most of us are aware at how competitive the race is to enter and how the Golden Bond system works. Charities pay around £300 for a place in the marathon, meaning that in order to secure a profit they are forced to set fundraising targets for their runners (normally around the £1500 mark). It is easy to forget that £300 of the money you raise for your charity is covering the cost of your place and going back to the London Marathon.

The marathon is, of course, a charity and 100% of the profits made (after the costs of staging the event and salaries etc.) go to the London Marathon charitable trust. But Dispatches claim that only a quarter of the £18m received last year actually went to the charity. The show also went on to question the costs of staging the event and showed the salary of one particular member at a remarkable £240,000. The Marathon’s chief executive Nick Bitel however, explained on the Third Sector website that this person was paid a one-off bonus as part of their salary for saving the marathon £3m in sponsorship agency fees.

The show also shone a light on the fact that the London Marathon holds a complete monopoly over charities. It’s obviously a very popular event, which provides great exposure and awareness to some very worthwhile causes. But the odds of a charity being able to obtain a Golden Bond place if they applied now were very slim indeed (one charity representative in the show was told that he could never expect to be granted a place). This did strike me as unfair, considering that some charities have hundreds of runners.

Make no mistake about it. The show has stirred up a lot of anger amongst a lot of people (including the man responsible for the resignations of some senior BBC officials, Alastair Campbell) and the London Marathon Limited has stated that it will be referring the production company, Blakeway (who make the Dispatches show), and Channel 4 to OFCOM. This does make me wonder how accurate the show was and question how much of it to take seriously. Dispatches allegedly repeatedly rejected to meet the London Marathon team and also denied them the opportunity to appear on the show to say what they wanted to say unedited.

Did you see the show on Friday night? Please let me know what your thoughts were by posting a comment below.

Tracing the Marathon’s Millions was aired on C4, 8pm 9th April 2010. You can watch it on 4OD for a limited time here.

For those that aren’t aware, every two years the people at Comic Relief and BBC Sport team up to raise a massive amount for charity, as well as uniting the sporting community and providing an entertaining night of TV for the British public. This year’s main celebrity contribution has come from Eddie Izzard, who ran 43 marathons in 52 days in aid of this cause (painful ice-bath video here). The Sport Relief Mile allows individuals from all over the country to run a mile and get friends and family to sponsor them. Money raised will either go to some of the poorest countries in the World, or will stay at home to help underprivileged people in the UK.

Even my 7-year-old brother was involved this year. His school took part, running 4 laps of their school field. But the little Mini Sir Jog A Lot ended up doing 10 laps! Show off.

The run was staged around Bristol’s College Green and as there were so many people running, the race was set off in waves. Doing 6 miles, as I was, meant 6 laps around a one-mile course. I was in this to get a good time. My marathon training plan said “10km race – hard effort” so I was keen to keep a sub 8-mile an hour pace.

Bang! We’re off (click – turn the watch on) and the serious athlete Sir Jog A Lot immediately realises he’s taking this event far too seriously. It’s not a race, it’s a fun run. I still wanted a good time, but I wasn’t going to get annoyed by having to dodge rollerbladers, musicians, 3-year-olds, hula hoopers and mankini-clad nutters (even though another wave of runners was released right into my path on the 4th lap).

Sadly, it was all over before it had begun. The hilly little 6 laps (which turned out to be only 5.58 miles according to the GPS) went by in 43 minutes. I was bloody pleased with that! I was on course for a 47-minute 10k and had a good laugh in the process. Last time I checked, Sport Relief had raised over £30 million. A fabulous effort in which half of the country seems to have been a part of. And on top of that, a good quality medal and a goodie bag to boot!

A special mention to my running partners Hannah (3 miles) and Jess (6 miles), whom I rudely left behind right at the start! I wasn’t taking it seriously, honest…

Image by bignoseduglyguy via Flickr

As I finished a 14-miler last weekend I passed two runners coming in the other direction. These two chaps, virtually sprinting, were about 7 feet tall and didn’t have an ounce of fat on them. If you’d have cooked them up and made a jogger-burger you’d still be chewing the meat a week later. These two were as toned as they come.

I’d manage to finish my 14-mile training run in about 2 hours 10 minutes (not bad going considering I was taking it easy). Who knows at what stage these two runners were. But just from the look of their posture, the length of their stride and the clothes they were wearing you could tell that they were professionals. Or at least ran for more than a hobby.

This got me thinking. How much of a lifestyle change do you have to make to become a professional runner? How much competition is there? What sort of money are we talking for a race win? How fast do you really have to be?

The first thing to distinguish is which type of event are we trying to excel in? Track runners have a completely different training regime and diet to distance runners. This being a blog about the London Marathon, we’ll focus on marathon running.

1. Training

My (intermediate level) training plan for the marathon consists of 5 runs a week. Every Saturday I’ll go on my long run, adding a mile each week until I’ve hit 21 miles before tapering off a few weeks before a race. I’ll be lucky if I run more than 30 miles a week in the mid stages. Paula Radcliffe’s training plan for the same race sees her running 150 miles a week. That’s the equivalent of London to Cardiff each week!

Working on an 8-day cycle, she’ll typically do two runs a day (swapping some runs for a session with the weights or a sports massage). There’s no denying that in order to race at a competitive level some serious time on the road is needed. This raises the question of holding down a job. Surely there aren’t enough hours in the day?

2. Diet

As well as giving up your free time, there are certain foods you must give up (or at least cut down on) to have a chance of competing professionally. Keep the refined sugars and fat down and the carbs and protein up. Also, due to the increased level of training, professional runners have to eat often. To speed recovery, a runner will usually eat within half an hour after a run. So say hello to bananas, rice and salmon and wave goodbye to crisps, iced-cream and fizzy drinks (although our favourite record holder can’t go without her daily dark chocolate fix).

3. Competition

To compete in the London Marathon as a male elite runner you need to be able to run a marathon in under 2 hours 45 minutes (sub 3.15 if you are female). No small feat. But plenty elite runners manage this each year and are in with a shot of claiming victory.

The World Marathon Majors compiles the big 5 city marathons (Boston, New York, Chicago, Berlin and our favourite London). In order to qualify you must score in the top 5 in at least 4 of these events. Again, no small feat. But this is where the prize money starts to get interesting.

4. Money

Let’s not beat about the bush. To start making money from winning races you’ve got to be good. Really good. To get in the money at the London Marathon you’ve got to be able to run a sub 2:11:00 (sub 2:28:00 for women). This will earn you a cool $1000.

But get past a certain level and the money starts to get pretty tasty. Finish first place in the London Marathon and you can expect upwards of $50,000. And it doesn’t stop there.

Finish the marathon in under 2:05:00 and you’ll get a $100,000 kicker. Break the course record in the process and you’ll get another $25,000. Break the World record and you’ll land yourself another $125,000 on top of all your winnings! So if you are a world record breaker, there is potential to win upwards of $300,000!

Couple that with winning the World Marathon Majors and you’re on your way to becoming a millionaire.

Running for a living
(cue cheesy stock photo)

Let’s face it. Unless you’re the best of the best, you’re not going to see any prize money from entering a marathon. The decision to turn professional can’t be easy. As we’ve seen, training is a full-time job and requires ultimate dedication. To gamble a lifestyle on the premise of winning a race seems to me to be a big gamble. It is no surprise then that the majority of professionals start young and gain their confidence and technique through years of experience (from track running out of a school club).

Of course, earning a living from running doesn’t just have to come from winning races. Coaches and personal trainers at a basic level can charge around £50 an hour for their services. Get a job at a running magazine, writing about your favourite sport and you’ve obtained the epitome of job satisfaction!

I’d love to hear from any althetes who run full time. Do you know anyone who makes a living out of running? How big a yearly income can they expect? Feel free to comment below and let us know.

There are 9 different events to choose from on the day. Obviously the main event is a full marathon, but also available to participate in is a quarter marathon, 10km walk, ‘mini’ races for children and a handcyles half marathon. However, the most popular distance (with over 3000 more entrants than the full marathon) is the half marathon.

The starting point is a 20 minute train journey away from the finish line, in La Tour-de-Peilz, a cool 13.1 miles away. Handily, your running number is your train fare, but the train runs almost side-by-side with the running route, painfully showing you just how far you have to run to reach the finish line back in Lausanne.

1:30 pacer

The standard of runners is very high in Switzerland. The fastest time in 2009 was a 1:05:58. Brilliantly, this means that there are pacers everywhere. These athletes, with coloured balloons strapped to their backs, position themselves at the correct starting points and run at the right pace, so that if you follow them you will match the time written on their balloon. I followed the purple 2:00 balloon (having not trained nearly enough and feeling very out of my depth). I didn’t see a balloon with a pace slower than 2:10 on the day, which goes to show the calibre of the runners there.

The actual race was fantastic. The road back to Lausanne follows the coast line of Lake Geneva. With the lake on your left the entire journey, you pass through some incredible countryside. However, this does mean that the level of support is very sparse. While you do pass through a couple of small towns, there aren’t many people around to cheer you on until the last half mile. This race is the first that I have run with headphones. Obviously, at one point an ambulance used the route, which I of course did not hear and was pushed to the side of the road by an angry Swiss man. Luckily, my French wasn’t good enough to understand the profanities being hurled my way.

Drink stations were frequent and the road was wide enough to allow a good spread of runners. It was quite congested at the start and around the pace setters, but after the half-way mark the congestion had thinned out. The course did seem to be a constant uphill climb, albeit not very steep.

I crossed the finish line (outside the Olympic Museum in Lausanne) after passing the 2 hour pace setter, in a time of 1:58:13 (a personal best for me). Considering I had only really trained by doing one long run each weekend for the previous month, I was very pleased. The cool weather and clean air must have played a part!

The Lausanne Half Marathon is a very well organised event. It costs around £30 to enter and for the number of people participating the facilities are impressive (ample toilets, free pasta party, an expo, good quality medal and a courier system to transport your belongings to the finish line).

You can enter here for next year but if you do I have three pieces of advice for you:

1. Learn how to convert kilometres to miles. Being a European country, all distance markers are in kilometres and I was forced to do some tough maths in my head to work out if I was going at the right pace to finish in a good time.
2. At the finish, make sure you park your car at the bottom of the hill. Lausanne is full of incredibly steep hills and walking up them at the end of a 13-mile run is not recommended.
3. Hang around a little at the end. If the podium frees up enough you can get some great pictures!

My two running buddies, Gemma and Matt

On the rare occasion that you actually spot a shirt that hugs the biceps and doesn’t flap around in the air conditioning from your local gym then go over, shake that person’s hand and ask them if they’d like a running partner. The likelihood is that this person has finished the JPMorgan CC in under 24 minutes.

Every year business moguls in their thousands turn up to one of their city’s finest parks to run the JPMorgan Corporate Challenge, an event now over 30 years old and so popular that it boasts nearly a quarter of a million entrants each year across the globe. Part of its popularity is probably down to the length of the race; a manageable 3.5 miles. This gives even the hardest working city trader time to put down his or her Blackberry a couple of times a week to train.

If you’re lucky enough to get a place then the first question you’ll be asked is whether or not you think you can run 3.5 miles in under 21 minutes. If you think you can then you’ll be given a red sticker and, on arrival, you’ll be ushered to the front of the line to be given a relatively clear run to the finish. If you don’t then be prepared for an elbow-jousting scrap for one square-foot of asphalt at every other step.

The London event is hosted at the beautiful Battersea Park and is a utter schmooze-fest. If you’re a client of one of the corporate giants attending then you’ll be in for plastic glasses and private portaloos. If not, feel free to be intimidated by the size of another company’s hospitality tent and get in the queue for the sub-£5 million-a-year toilets.

It’s a very crowded race once you’ve managed to get over the start line so don’t be expecting to be beating any PBs. You’ll be lucky to get under a minute over your usual time (the London race actually ground to a halt during one bottle-necked corner). The atmosphere makes up for this though. Each year all companies compete in a t-shirt competition and this makes for an interesting read as you progress (this year’s London event was won by Tudor Capital). There’s also an award for the fastest ‘most senior executive’ and, as you can imagine, an incredible amount of money is raised for causes across the globe ($600,000 to charities and even more for not-for-profit organisations).

At the end you’ll get the fabled JPMCC t-shirt and if you’re quick enough, you’ll get one in your size! Wear it with pride.

Okay, so you’re a competent runner. You’re a 10km pro, perhaps have a few half marathons under you’re belt, and maybe even a marathon and, towards the end you’re usually overtaking – and that makes you feel good. But, when the time comes up after the race, there’s a nagging doubt that perhaps you could be doing better. But how? How can you shave off a few minutes here, some precious seconds there, and start to improve those times? Well, thankfully, here are some tips to help you smash that PB:

1. Race everything
   
   You see that other runner plodding along 60 meters away? Yeah? She’s going to win £1,000 instead of you unless you catch her in two minutes. Oh and that tree blowing innocently in the wind? It’s going to fall on you unless you’re past it in under 45 seconds. Basically: find motivation, whatever it is, to make yourself run faster than you need to. Overtake other runners, see how long you can stay ahead of a cyclist coming up behind you, imagine a dog is about to attack you, and so on. Anything you can do to exert extra energy will help you reach a new level of fitness. And it’s fun too. This is essentially the Swedish running style known as Fartlek (Speed Play) and is a good way to have fun, and increase your speed, while out running.

2. Push yourself
   
   Perhaps this will sound obvious but you’ve got to push yourself. This though, needn’t mean running like Usian Bolt and sweating more than Lee Evans, it just means easing yourself from a position of comfort while running to one of, well, a bit less comfort. Next time you find yourself ticking along nicely, gradually start to accelerate. Nothing major, but a slow, steady increase, so that after about 200 meters you’re doing a good speed. Now maintain that pace for about three minutes, or as long as you feel comfortable with, and then ease back down to a comfortable pace. Speeding up gradually and then easing back down will help to shift the boundary of your most comfortable running speed to one that’s slightly faster than before.

3. Time yourself
   
   Investing in a good watch is a great way to go faster. Being able to accurately record how fast and how far you’re running while out and about provides you with a much better way of being able to assess your ability. And using the Fartlek running style (mentioned above) means you can put a specific speed and/or distance limit on each sprint you do – say, 0.4km at 4.30 minutes per km. Garmin, the most well-known brand, have watches that start at around £60 on Amazon and a little shopping around will help you see what seems best.

4. Plan your race
   
   This is the time when you might feel like an obsessive runner. Pick a race that’s flat, on a smooth surface, and avoids laps. Have a good breakfast (and a banana) and make sure you’re there in plenty of time to warm up. The race itself is also something you need to plan. The first 3km could dash any hopes you have if you go too slow or get caught in a crowd, so get to a good position in the start and ensure you begin at the pace you’ve planned for. Through 3km to 8km, you want to find that rhythm you’ve built to in training and stick to it: this is where your fancy watch will come in handy, telling you your exact pace, and alerting you if you’re going to slowly, allowing you to pick up the pace before you fall too far behind. Then over the last two kilometers really push it home, using the adrenaline of the race environment, the knowledge you’re close to home, and the fact you’re about to smash your PB, to really shave off as many seconds, or indeed minutes, as you can. Hopefully, this will see you home in your best time yet; and there’s something intensely satisfying about that.

Only trouble is once… now you’ve set it you’ve got to break it again. Back out on the road you go…