London Marathon 2022 (2nd October)

Good For Age entries are now open for applications:

You have until the 29th November to get your application in.

Good For Age emails should be dropping into email inboxes now.

Not until February apparently.

It's an odd one as they have known for 2 years who had places deferred from 2020,which was a third of the normal ballot places, others having got assigned places for 2021 and 2023 already. It's only the ballot places they are dealing with anyway as the charity ones don't have anything to do with it... Unless they had their arms twisted by the charities to give out an extra allocation than normal due to some charities having missed out on places.

I would expect the availability of ballot places to be 2/3rds of the normal availability, with a small number of deferrals carried over from 2021 taking a few extra places out of circulation. Shouldn't be taking them an extra 2 weeks though.

Just got that same email as well, due to my GFA place.

Did you have a place deferred from 2020 or anything?

Everyone who submitted a time within the qualifying criteria was accepted, at least didn't see mention anywhere of rejection due to additional cut off times. They did accept times from the virtual marathon app for 2021, think for 2022 you also had to submit a half marathon time in an actual race though for it to count.

You would have had to pay for the place though which you'd probably remember doing. :)

The event guide has finally been released:

We won't know our wave start times until we get an email on the 23rd. Need that email to pick up number at the Expo. No sign of special arrangements at the Expo and so assume that is back to normal and we won't have to queue in another exhibition hall for an hour before picking up numbers this time.

Baggage lorries are back. Yay!!! So get to drop kit on the morning at the start and pick up at the finish.

Pre covid, yes it is big and lots of stuff there. Plenty of opportunities to spend money, run on a massive treadmill, get samples of various energy foods, listen to various people chatting about running on the main stage and pick up more marathon adverts for cities that you'd never even heard of before.

Last year it was a bit dead in the expo itself as I think people had had enough after queuing to get in and just left after collecting numbers and chips.

Yellow has always been GFA (except last year). They have had wave 1 and 2 printed on the numbers for Yellow for as long as I noticed it, but they never really distinguish between the waves there. They just queue us all up and get us on the road before they release wave 1 of the Red start.

You may have just got bumped up to GFA because not the full quota of places were taken up this year.

I think from Holborn you may be as well heading to Charring Cross and getting a surface train from there to Blackheath. Avoid dlr or train to Greenwich or Maze Hill as whilst it's about the same walk you may get stuck in the park with the Red start and have to make a long walk round. Blackheath to the start is dead easy. There is some questions over train times at the moment due to strikes on the Saturday, but keep an eye on the London Marathon twitter feed which seems to be giving updates.

Not sure on location for pints, but I'll be up for a couple before I have to get my Mega Bus back.

There is probably only 3000 at most in the Yellow start with the rest of the GFA in Green or Blue. My wave 1 time is 9:40, but in reality they tend to hold us for a minute so that nobody gets any ideas of trying to outrun the elites to the course merge point. Would expect wave 2 Yellow to just be mixed in with wave 1 and we all head off at once, although we'll be queuing the wrong way on the grass at the start as there isn't enough room for us all directly in front of the Red waves.

Was a great day today with almost perfect weather. I'd set out with absolutely no expectations regarding times and was just looking to get around and enjoy the run.

Started off and just ran at no particular pace, just what felt right. That was still feeling good for way longer than I anticipated and wasn't challenging myself until closer to 18 ish. Then realising that knocking a big chunk of time off my GFA time from April was a distinct possibility even if I blew up ( my April time being only a minute inside so likely not good enough). Pace started to drop a touch, but didn't fight that too much and just ensured I kept moving.

Loved it all the way round and managed to finish with a 3:04:59 which should be safe for GFA and a 4 minute improvement from earlier in the year.

That was my 10th London Marathon today as well and now 12th time securing GFA (I don't count the 2020 virtual run).