Yesterday was the hottest April day EVERRRR. Well, since 1949. So long ago that anyone who was actually alive then doesn’t have the memory to remember yesterday, let alone 69 years ago. So for all intents and purposes, yesterday is the new record day. And hot it was. Today’s gonna be hot too. And Saturday and Sunday.

And Sunday is the London Marathon day. And will be the hottest one everrrrr. 40,000 runners doing their 26 (and a bit) miles in the searing heat. And its city heat, which is never that lovely, always a bit damp and stuffy. Of those 40,000, 24 are serious athletes. Mo Farrah and that kind of person. 193 are competitive amateurs, run for athletic clubs, fancy themselves a bit. After that they get older and frailer and progressively slower and are the people who wake up every day with aching backs and sore limbs and take too much ibuprofen but love the running or are too competitive to quit. That takes care of the first 20,000. The other 20,000 are doing it for charity. And run in fancy dress.

I could never run a marathon. I can barely run for the bus. Without falling over… and I’m actually in total awe of those who do. Because it takes a level of discipline that I simply don’t have. Plus, I don’t like running really, only on the tennis court where it comes in spurts of wondrous energy. I don’t like the seemingly endless repetitive sports like swimming, running, biking for 35 miles on a Sunday morning. I like sports that involve trash talk and insulting competitors. Which is probably why I loved playing football so much. Maybe I don’t like the idea of spending 4 hours (phah! in yer dreams!!), ok, spending 9 hours in my own solitary company?

So the fancy dressers impress us every year. Because not only are they going to run a frikkin marathon, they’re going to do it as a pantomime horse with their mate Billy. Or as a pregnant camel, shlepping round about 50 lbs of humps and bumps. On stilts. Dressed as a fully functional tank with rotating cannon. Two people strapped together running it ‘3-legged’ (like running 26 miles unencumbered is just too easy). On stilts. Pushing wheelchairs. There’s no limits.

But this year they are advising people to ditch the fancy dress for fear of dehydration. And… er… possible death. No-one wants to go to work Monday morning to find the streets littered with bodies. It’ll be like 1665 all over again. The great Plague, in case you’d forgotten.

Yet the marathon without those people will not be true to its ethos. And you simply know that anyone daft enough to run that far with that much impediment ain’t gonna cancel because of a bit of sunshine.

Good luck to them all.

Happy sunny days. Cos they ain’t gonna last.

A xxxx