'At 56 I ran my first marathon - here's the training technique that did it'

For 30 years, I’ve lived near the starting line and watched hundreds of inspirational people begin their runs. Still, I never really considered joining them until, at the age of 56, I signed up for my first ever marathon – not in my home town, but in New York.

I’m really not one of those women who’ve taken to crazy fitness challenges in middle age. Although I’m active and enjoy all sorts of exercise, short and largely deskbound is how I’d describe myself. My motivation was simple: I wanted to do something special with my son.

George, my eldest, was born in New York in 2001, just after 9/11. With my daughters, I share a love of the same movies and more, but I’ve grown increasingly envious of my husband’s easy relationship with him, seemingly rooted in practicalities and football. We’re an active family and all love walking – after George graduated in 2024, the five of us climbed Borneo’s Mount Kinabalu. The sunrise at 4,095 metres was magical, but I couldn’t walk unaided for days afterwards. Still, it felt like the most bonding thing I’d done with George for years.

So, after managing a half marathon through London’s Royal Parks in 2024, I thought about doing something more. I wanted a challenge, but that wasn’t my real motivation. My mother started to show signs of a particularly devastating form of dementia in her 70s. Watching her decline has accelerated my desire to make memories my children will remember, even if I don’t.

That’s why I signed up George and myself for a challenge in a city that means a lot to us both. George was immediately up for it – but part of me worried that it wouldn’t live up to the hype.

I gave myself a whole year to train, which turned out to be a good thing as the time was punctuated by injuries – from a dislocated shoulder to an agonising bout of plantar fasciitis and Achilles tendinitis. I worried that I might let George down as well as myself, so I threw everything at it. When I couldn’t run, I cycled indoors and picked up weights. My friend Juliet, who did her first Ironman triathlon at 50, told me about the run/walk method, alternating between periods of running and planned walking breaks to reduce fatigue and injury risk while building endurance, which kept me going. Support from the women in my local Greenwich runners’ club was invaluable, too. I also tried visualisation for the first time, inspired by a physiotherapist sister-in-law.

My injuries meant the running I’d planned to do with George became stretching together instead. But I kept WhatsApping him tips. Looking back at those messages, I seem a bit relentless. One reads: ‘I’m listening to these running podcasts so you don’t need to.’ He responded with a LOL emoji. While I fretted about hydration vests, George just popped into a minimart for water during his 20-mile training run.

We were really excited when we set off together for Heathrow, and I was so chuffed when the steward on the flight asked if I was running the marathon. George pointed out I’d been stretching outside the bathrooms on a plane full of runners…

Two nights before the marathon, I felt so nervous that I asked a friend who’d booked us dinner to move it earlier so I could sleep more. George, meanwhile, went out with friends till 5am. I thought he wasn’t taking it seriously enough. I kept comparing the experience to childbirth, connecting all my injuries back to the process of giving birth to this now-6ft bloke!

George was a much faster runner than me, and it’s really hard to run at someone else’s slower pace, but we decided to at least start together. The sky was bright blue as we took the morning ferry across to Staten Island, and I took photos of us together, with the Freedom Tower and the Statue of Liberty behind.

Three hours later, we set off together beneath the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. At the starting cannon, George said, ‘Let’s do this, Mum!’ as Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York belted out through the loudspeakers.

I loved every moment of the six hours and 43 minutes it took me to get to the end of those 26.2 miles. Until you experience thousands of people lined up along a route, urging you on or holding up signs, it’s hard to explain how much the support matters. When I saw my husband and friends at mile 22, I cried.

It was dark when I finished and George, there an impressive three hours before me, helped me limp over the line, giving me a hug that I hope I’m never going to forget. The high lasted so much longer than the pain.

I’ve learned so much about myself doing the marathon – what motivates me, how my body works (or doesn’t) – but also a lot about my son. He moved out to live with friends last summer, three months before the marathon and just before his youngest sister went to university, leaving me in an empty nest. I was sad, even a little bit cross at first. But after New York, something shifted. It may sound strange, but only afterwards did I really understand how grown-up he was, a man who supports as much as he needs support and knows himself even better than I know him.

You don’t need to do a marathon to gain that understanding… but it helps.