I honestly think that running the London Marathon for charity is only worth it if you make a lot of money in fundraising. Here's why.

Charity Entry Fee - £444

To confirm a place in the marathon, having won a charity place, the charity needs to play £370 + VAT, so in order to get a place in the first place the charity needs to pay out £444. If you raise less than that then your charity is literally losing money.

Money I'll Spend - £300

I'm trying not to spend too much of my own money on this, and thankfully I already have a nice running watch and a few other things that really help, but I've already bought new running shoes at £135, and it's more than conceivable that I'm going to spend at least £165 over the course of the next year on stuff like lucozade sport!

Training Time £1046

From training so far it looks like I'll be training for about 120 hours. If, instead of running madly on the streets for that time, I took an easy, unskilled, minimum wage job (£8.72 an hour) and gave the money to Carriers of Hope, I'd be giving them £1046.40.

So logically that's £1790 at least that I need to raise to make this worth it.

Then there's the following more moral reasons:

I might not get sponsored for a marathon again.

When I first ran a half marathon, I asked for sponsorship. It was a big deal, a challenge. Then I ran three more and didn't ask for sponsorship. At that time of my life it was just a hobby, and I'd already gotten into shape to do it, and knew I could do it. I don't believe in getting sponsorship if it's not a challenge.

This is a new challenge, and a flippin' hard one! So I'm happy to try to raise some money again. I might enjoy it enough to run a few more, but again I doubt that will be sponsor worthy. It's also unlikely that I'll get a London place again. 

Carriers of Hope might not get a London Marathon place again.

The odds of any small charity getting a London Marathon place are very slim. There's only 500 places to begin with and a lot of charities apply. This could be their one shot to raise money from the marathon, and I'm going to make sure it's as worthwhile as it can be.


And it's such a good charity

I really hugely believe in Carriers of Hope and the work it does. It's small and scrappy and does everything it can to make life easier for one of the most marginalised groups in our society. They deserve this.

I've checked out a few of the major charity places, and they expect a minimum amount of fundraising of about £2,000 - £2,500. They get to enter every year though and have more than the one place. I think to make this absolutely worth it I'll need to raise at least £5000.