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Meet our Marathon Man Martin!

The London Marathon is one of the most popular races in the world and competition to get a place to run is fierce, but one of our brilliant Scottish volunteers, Martin Vernon has acquired a place in this year’s event thanks to his amazing running efforts already. 

There are many challenging ways to secure your spot on the starting line in south London, but if your goal is to run 26.2 miles through the capital you might need to put the hard yards in just like Martin has done, as he secured his spot by the London Marathon’s Good For Age system. 

What is London Marathon Good For Age? 

The ‘Good For Age’ system rewards runners who have run a marathon in a time that is deemed by the London Marathon to be good for their age and gender. In fact any male runner between the ages of 65 and 69 who has run sub 3:55:00 in a qualifying event can apply for a Good For Age place. 

Martin Qualified with 3:36:01 

Martin Vernon, who is one of our volunteers at our Bellshill and Club 100 clubs in Lanarkshire ran the Edinburgh Marathon in 2024 with a superb time of 3 hours 36 minutes and 1 second. Those seconds do count! He was delighted with his time and applied for this years London Marathon and got a place. Martin has decided to run this race on behalf of Sporting Memories to hopefully raise as much money as he can. 

Now all that seems fantastic, of course, and many of our members and volunteers may wish to be as fit as Martin but there’s a bit more to this story. When we asked Martin if he was sporty in his younger days he said “Not at all”. We thought he might be being a bit modest but no, he only took up competitive running in 2014 with a couple of 10Ks and half marathons.  

Getting a bit more serious 

When he retired in 2016 after over 40 years in the Civil Service, he started training for and running in more events culminating in his first marathon in 2023 at Edinburgh. He was pleased with his times and aimed for 2024 at the same race. We wanted to know the secret of his training and if he had a coach, special diets and what helped become such a speedy runner in his sixties.  

Martin told us he didn’t do anything special really! He had downloaded an App onto his phone and followed the suggested training schedule on that. It’s a 16-week schedule aiming to be race ready and when we spoke he had just completed a 14-mile run in the usual foul Scottish weather. 

Fortunately, he had also just returned from a warm week in the Canaries where he managed to pack in some runs in more temperate climes. All good stuff he reckoned as London at the end of April can be anything from a heatwave to snow and ice. Although he did say he preferred running in cooler weather and rain wasn’t really a problem as long as it wasn’t pelting down. 

Spotted the small print 

While chatting with Martin, we asked how he had found Sporting Memories and here’s another lovely story. Last summer Glasgow hosted the Indoor World Athletics Championships and he applied to be a volunteer with the World Athletics during the games.  

He ended up with the Cycling and thoroughly enjoyed it. As part of the volunteers paperwork a list of other local opportunities was included and Sporting Memories was on the list. Martin spotted it, made enquiries and after taking part in our fully supported training programme, joined our team!  

Martin stated he is thoroughly enjoying his volunteering journey with us and would encourage anyone reading this to give it a try. 

Martin has set up a Just Giving page which you can access here and remember all donations will go to Sporting Memories. We will be keeping in touch with our marathon man leading up to the race and plan to keep our members, fellow volunteers and followers fully informed of his progress. 

BTW he truly has the bug as he also has place in the Chicago Marathon in the Autumn!