Thank you to everyone who entered the Lucozade Sport Marathon Pack competition last week by leaving a comment on the post with your predicted race time. There seem to be some very sporty runners amongst you, with the majority aiming to run it under 4 hours!

Congratulations to..

1. Mark Entwisle from Bracknell
2. Graham Cutter from Fareham
3. Shafiq Khan from Lancashire
4. Katy Greene from Pitstone
5. Richard Taylor from East Lothian

Your Lucozade Sport Marathon packs are on their way to you and you should have them before the race this coming Sunday.

Good luck! SJAL

Thanks to the marvellous people at Lucozade Sport, I’ve got 5 marathon race packs to give away and post to you before the London Marathon on the 25th April. The packs include:

• Lucozade Sport Body Fuel in Raspberry
• Lucozade Sport Body Fuel Caffeine Boost
• Lucozade Sport Jelly Beans
• Lucozade Sport Carbohydrate Energy Tablets
• Lucozade Sport Orange Cereal Bar
• Lucozade Sport Mixed Berry Cereal Bar
• VLM Course Route Runners Guide
• Liz & Martin Yelling’s VLM Tips

To enter, simply leave your name and your predicted race time in a comment below (just for interests sake)! I’ll announce the winners on Monday so we can get your packs out to you before the race on the following Sunday (race day).

Good luck! SJAL.

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED

Your email address will in no way be distributed to third parties. Entry to UK residents only.

To fight my way through the post-marathon depression in 2009 I’d booked myself into the BUPA London 10,000 to keep busy. The race was a month after the end of the marathon so I’d managed to retain a bit of the fitness I’d had. Wanting to get a good time, 5 minutes before the start I opened up a carbo gel and started the horrible process of forcing the goopy syrup down my lughole.

The wave of nausea that hit me was quite unexpected. It immediately brought back the latter stages of the marathon and it took me 4 gulps get the stuff down.

I’ve never enjoyed taking carbo gels. Firstly, the taste and sensation takes some getting used to. I’ve tried out quite a few different types of gel while training for the marathon, each with varying levels of viscosity. I simply can’t get used to the process of squeezing a sachet of runny, bitter-sweet goop down my throat without feeling the urge to regurgitate.

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Every year the London Marathon team release a media pack, designed to give journalists and sports presenters all the fuel they need to provide an entertaining report/broadcast come race day. Last year I stumbled upon it while I was doing some research to find out what was in store for me (having never run a marathon before).

The London Marathon Media Guide is full of great statistics and facts about the London Marathon. It’s also 210 pages long so to save you some time I’ve lifted some of the key sections for you here.

Enjoy! Read more »

Thanks to everyone who entered the competition to win a copy of BMF’s new iPhone app, My Fitness Instructor.

We had three to give away. The lucky three winners were:

• Toni Quandt
• Laura Snell (@LauraASnell)
• Simon Collinge (@cobbiecollinge)

Congratulations you three! You’ll be receiving an email shortly with an iTunes gift certificate to redeem the app.

We have one more competition coming up before the marathon starts. There’ll be a chance for 5 of you to win a Lucozade Sport running pack!

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.

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Last year the kind people at BMF (British Military Fitness) got in touch and offered me a free session with one of their military instructors. My conclusion was that it was a fantastic workout, a great atmosphere and very fairly priced. But if the weather was half as bad as it has been lately, I might as well have thrown that money away. My 3-year tenure in the South has turned me into a soft-as-sh*te, cold hater.

A chap called Jon, who also runs a blog called My Big Fat Geek Running, emailed me just before the launch of the BMF iPhone app, My Fitness Instructor. His blog is a cross between losing weight and promoting the iPhone app, which launched on Friday 26th March. Jon kindly offered me a chance to review it.

My Fitness Instructor is a premium application that allows you to fit your own little BMF instructor right in your pocket. Instead of paying the price of a gym membership every month, you can splash out £5.99 and choose when and where you do your own workouts.

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