The Marathon distance of 26 miles and 385 yards was set at the London Olympic Marathon run on 24th July 1908. Before then, and even for a few years afterwards, the event was run over a variety of distances. In 1921 the IAAF Congress decided that a standard was needed and settled on the London distance. The course of the 1908 event was from Windsor to the White City Stadium built for the Olympic events, leading round the outer suburbs of London. The course was originally measured to be about 25 miles long but it was extended in Windsor to start in front of the windows of the Royal Nursery of Windsor Castle and also at the end to finish in the stadium in front of the Royal Box.
In July 2008 a small group of us decided to honour the first running of the standard distance by rerunning the event over the same course. It was Piers who had the idea and I took on the role of event manager. This involved communicating the idea to colleagues in the club and surveying and mapping the course. Over a number of weekends I ran the whole course, researching the difficult stretches including taking photographs of key points. The course couldn't be identical to that of 1908, it had the following differences:
I measured the planned course at about 26.5 miles (using Google Earth). On the day we were able to avoid the Iver Heath diversion but I'm still confident that the marathon runners ran at least the 26 mile and 385 distance. The course is shown below. Click on each of the coloured sections to go to the detailed maps of each section, complete with photographs, mile markers and other details.
The Start at Windsor:
We had four volunteers to run the whole distance and six of us, including myself, to run portions of the course. I planned to operate two drinks stations from the boot of my car at 11 miles and 17 miles. The day was very hot so I also handed out water at 6 miles. We had an informal stop at a former work colleagues house at 12 miles and another running colleague handed out 6 litres of water at 23 miles - to the 6 of us! Oh and thanks to the cafe owner in Harlesden who handed out two bottles of water to Piers and Richard as they ran past.
We planned to set off at 08:30 on Sunday 27th July but had gathered earlier to allow time for photographs - we had come dressed up for 1908.
And the finish...
...alright, that was the 1908 finish. See the photographs for the 2008 finish.
The event went very well. Logistically everyone was at their various meeting places at the right time and everyone managed to get to where they had meant to finish - though not all by the right routes!
Dave ran the start and the end of the course. I ran some short stretches in the first half of the course and some longer stretches towards the end.
I had been very worried by a stretch of road at Iver Heath which was a 60mph duel carriageway with no footpath or cycle path and only a narrow and badly overgrown verge. To be safe we would of needed to have had a carriageway lane coned off and a 20 mph speed limit imposed to prevent stone chippings being propelled at the runners as cars overtook. I had planned a half mile diversion to avoid the worst part of that stretch of road. On the day we were very lucky - the council had decided to resurface the road, starting on the other carriageway but in preparation they had coned off one lane on our carriageway and imposed the speed limit we wanted.
Piers and Richard took a small shortcut in North Harrow but then took the wrong turning in the underpass in Harrow and ended up running significantly further. SteveT found a different route from Harlesden to the finish - shorter, but he missed the drinks station.
Piers and Richard finished in a very creditable time of about 4:50 and Chris and Paul in about 5:10.
After the run we found that we just had enough energy left to make it half a mile down South Africa Road to the nearest pub.
Credits and Further Information: