Running the marathon with joy
Credit: A Drewry
This year was the 45th running of the London Marathon. This event basically closes off my village next to Blackheath for the morning, unless you want to catch a train. We enjoy the quiet roads and the greetings of the neighbours that we see wandering around.
We all gathered together, had a coffee and collected our signs to cheer on the runners. It was a sunny day and we all enjoyed the outing – we did spot our one friend and did a good job of support, I hope. She spent over seven hours running it, which is just amazing. And many congratulations to Jake Handley of Sycamore Process Engineering, who completed the 26.2 miles in three hours and 50 minutes. Incredible!
I also joke around how my donations to charity are a way of paying people for a job I am not going to do. In this case, it’s running the marathon. It is one of those days where you really see the upside of humanity, with the endless stream of people who are running for everything from Asthma + Lung UK, to Pancreatic Cancer UK, to Kidney Care UK and the West Silvertown Foundation. There are so many more it would be a challenge to list them, as the more than 56,000 people who finished could tell you.
It does make for a good showing for humanity in general, I think. We sometimes have to be reminded of how we can lean towards the good and the marathon is such a joyous reminder.
To celebrate the happy day, we had a nice meal that afternoon, which finished off with vanilla ice cream. I had an idea for using our chocolate easter eggs, where I used up some by grating the chocolate over the ice cream. This went over well, except with my spouse, who instead took giant chunks of the easter egg and used the vanilla ice cream as a dip for those chips he had made. Which was sprinkled with grated chocolate anyway.
- Suzanne Christiansen, editor, Dairy Industries International.
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