London Marathon 2024

Written By Deborah Rota

Gosh what an atmosphere…

We quickly realised in the morning that yesterday was a different Sunday… We got on the overground in Clapham Junction at 8:15 in the morning and there was a bit more people than it should on an early weekend morning. Plus they were wearing running clothes, most of them were eating 🍌, and they had their number on their t-shirts… Yep it was marathon day! As a former (and hopefully not forever) runner, I felt a tang of envy as they got all off together with their loved ones, there to cheer them on.

(Useless side note: I used to run and was getting ready for my first 10k when my old knee injury flared up in January 2020. I was doing a 5k every Saturday on the previous year, and improving weekly, running made me feel free. But hey, c’est la vie.)

Anyhow we (myself and my husband), proceeded with our day and got off in Hoxton, where we then walked and spent the morning at the Columbia Road Flower Market, (it occurs every Sunday, but it was my first time in 10 years living here…), I got some good shots, even some footage (YouTube video coming soon! Stay tuned), we got so incredibly cold we had to find refuge in a (freezing) pub to have a cuppa (I have a cold and sore throat today… WTF is going on with the weather…), bought some tulips, ate some food, had a bit of fun together enjoying each other’s company.

We then decided to go to the 15-min-walk-away Vagina Museum (go: it’s free, very informative, and very inclusive), to warm up and with a bit of curiosity (it was destined to close last spring, but got saved, which is a good thing: there’s still too much ignorance and bigotry around women, their reproductive rights, and the lack of equality is still astounding). We spent about an hour there, got myself a really pretty necklace…

Not sure the message is clear…

Can’t wait to wear this 🤩

Then took the bus, which stopped right before Aldwych, where we decided to walk down to the Thames and cross it to Waterloo to take the train there. It’s then that we stumbled across the TCS London Marathon.

(Stumbled is a bit of an understatement here… we could hear the cheers from a MILE away 😂)

London gorgeous as always

…made even better by the runners.

The atmosphere there was incredible, it was like a party where the whole of London was participating and cheering the runners. Not gonna lie, it brought tears to my eyes. It was electric, cheerful, fun, involving.

So I took my camera out once again and started taking shots of the runners (realised later in the day that maybe I should have focused my attention more to the sidelines, but I got some nice shots of them too). We moved around a bit because as I am… how do you say… “vertically challenged”, and it was hard for me to see behind the wall of people 🙄

But I’m really happy with the results.

I’m going to share here some of the shots I took in colour

BnW coming right up

What do you think of the photos? I’m still in early stages, but I have been enjoying photographing events lately, so I might try and get into the action a little bit more.

If you’ve read through here, I thank you.

Here’s a couple links you may find useful:

Camera: Canon EOS RP, with the EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 lens and adapter.

Deborah Rota
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