The ultimate endurance test

TIME to talk of pasta and carbo loading. Of 26 mile runs and shin splints, of hitting the wall and PBs. Of tiredness. Time to talk of fearful images in the lexicon of distance running. Such things frighten folk who know no better. Things like bleeding feet and torn muscles, nausea and frayed tendons. Not forgetting dehydration and chapped thighs, sunstroke, windburn, freak accidents and disasters. The marathon is many things.

For the moaner it's a nightmare of traffic chaos and closed roads. It's the Bank Holiday Monday when if you live on the route and have to go to the shops for your daily paper it will take you at least 45 minutes.

For an athlete, it's a measured race. More measured perhaps than the 100 metres. How many top runners ever fail to finish their sprint event? How many train for six months and then go out with hopes of winning only to find out that on the day their bodies, without prior warning, have decided to give up on them before the end of the race.

It's a numbers game, too.

There's a car for the winner with not four doors but five.

There's a prize fund of £40,000 and an entry of around 4,000 people. Jon Kew from Bristol will wear the number 300 because - yes, you've guessed it - he is running in his 300th marathon.

But it's the high numbers that the elite are trying to avoid. Tommy Hughes, Jerry Healy and Tommy Maher will spearhead Ireland's challenge while William Musyoki from Kenya, who won last year's race in two hours 16 minutes and 57 seconds (2:16.57), will return to defend his title.

Ireland's Cathy Shum and Rosie Lambe are hoping to see off a considerable challenge from overseas. Danielle Sanderson from England, Haley Nash from Wales and New Zealand's Wendy Llewellyn have all run well under 2:40 for the distance and are confident of a similar mark on Monday.

When Shum and Lambe and Maher and Healy are finished and have received their commendation for surviving the course, others will continue for another three hours.

Some have changed the marathon from an endurance event into an ultra endurance test.