April 13th: The London Marathon

It's the London Marathon today, so here are 10 things you may not know about the London Marathon, and good luck to anyone who is running today.

1. The current London Marathon was founded in 1981 by former Olympic champion and journalist Chris Brasher and Welsh athlete John Disley. They did the New York Marathon in 1979, and were very impressed with the way New Yorkers got behind the event. They asked themselves, "Could London do this?"
2. Women were banned from running marathons, or any race over 200m, for that matter, until 1960 because the (male, obviously) organisers thought it was too strenuous for them (Tell that to Paula Radcliffe).
3. Talking of Paula Radcliffe, she holds the women's record for the London Marathon at 2hr 15min 25sec since 2003. The fastest man is Kenyan runner Emmanuel Mutai who completed the London Marathon in 2 hours 2 minutes and 40 seconds in 2011. The fastest MP is Matthew Parris who did it in 2 hours and 32 minutes in 1985.
4. At the other extreme is Lloyd Scott who took five days and 8 hours to complete the course wearing a deep-sea diving suit that weighed 110 lb (50 kg). In April 2003, former boxer Michael Watson took six days, after he had been told he would never be able to walk again after being injured during a fight with Chris Eubank. Nobody is going to beat that, because now the organisers have brought in a rule that the course must be completed within 24 hours.
5. The original Marathon was run by Pheidippides, who in 490BC, ran all the way from the battlefield at Marathon to Athens to announce that the Greeks had won the battle over the Persians. He ran 24.8 miles and then died of exhaustion on the spot. Runners today have a slightly harder job. They have to run 26.2 miles. Why? So that the Olympic Marathon in London in 1908 could end in front of the Royal Box. The mortality rate has improved considerably since Pheidippides' time. The chance of dying from running a Marathon now is one in 67,414.
6. In 2012, statisticians analysed the occupations of the entrants, and found that by far the best represented occupation was teachers (2974), followed by accountants (1931) and students (1634). There were also 24 game keepers, 60 vicars, 74 taxi drivers, 23 politicians, 756 doctors, 320 Fire-fighters and 87 stockbrokers. Psychiatrists were the least well represented occupation, with just 16 taking part.
7. The oldest person to run a London Marathon was Fauja Singh, who ran it in 2012, aged 101.
8. The London Marathon is longer than the longest bus route in London (which is, fyi, the X26 from Croydon to Heathrow Airport, which is a mere 23.75 miles long.
9. There is a small number of runners, who form an exclusive club called the "Ever Presents", who have completed every London Marathon since 1981. As of 2013 there were 15 of them. They are all male, and their ages range from 79 to 54.
10. The runners will use around 700,000 plastic bottles of water, 100lbs of Vaseline, 200 bottles of baby oil and 2000 plasters.