{"id":631218,"date":"2026-04-27T04:59:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T04:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/631218\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T04:59:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T04:59:12","slug":"the-joy-of-the-london-marathon-shows-its-possible-to-outrun-the-memory-of-school-pe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/631218\/","title":{"rendered":"The joy of the London Marathon shows it\u2019s possible to outrun the memory of school PE"},"content":{"rendered":"

As thousands of Britons check their trainers ready for today\u2019s London Marathon<\/a>, for those of us watching, it\u2019s like an annual exhale that dispels bad memories of school PE lessons.<\/p>\n

This week, new research from Age UK found<\/a> that, years later, more than four million Brits aged between 50 and 65 still feel negatively affected by their experience of school sport, while more than a quarter of respondents said it had put them off exercise \u201cfor life\u201d. This, mercifully, seems to have changed for the new generation. Last month, I visited Dorset House School in West Sussex, where the attitude to sport and movement more generally was so delightfully encouraging that, in the absence of a child to send there, I almost asked if I could send my dog instead. Or me.<\/p>\n

For many of us, the shadow of the enforced school PE lesson looms large. It has become a rite of passage for 20-somethings to rediscover their relationship with exercise, whether through a new hobby or finding a regimen that they actually enjoy.<\/p>\n

Crucially, the all-or-nothing wellness mentality that once dominated social media has also had its day. \u201cPeople started realising [much of it is] a marketing ploy,\u201d the cultural researcher and marketing strategist Viktoriia Vasileva told Dazed. \u201cNow, it\u2019s [just] swagless nerds who count their macros and West Village girls who make pilates and matcha their whole personality.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Health at Every Size and This Girl Can campaigns have brought exercise to people who felt shamed for not looking like the media had told them fit people \u201cshould\u201d, while the author and campaigner Bryony Gordon\u2019s multiple marathons in her underwear<\/a> have done much to cheerfully smash stigma around exercising to look a certain way, rather than to feel better.<\/p>\n

Put simply, sport is for everyone. The lopers, the loafers, the ungainly, those without the right trainers. Two of my favourite recent books, Marion Deuchars\u2019 Yoga For Stiff Birds, and Alison Bechdel\u2019s The Secret of Superhuman Strength, use illustrations to bring exercise to life, but it was Alexandra Heminsley\u2019s revolutionary memoir Running Like a Girl<\/a> which completely changed how I felt about it. I started doing parkrun. I\u2019d casually knock off a 10k with friends before brunch! So carried away was I that I ended up both as a literal poster girl for the charity Mind and running the London Marathon in 2014. Not bad for someone still haunted by memories of the beep test and cold, cold hockey fields. <\/p>\n

\"\u2018Watching\u2018Watching the London Marathon is the most inspiring day in the capital. Thousands upon thousands of people, each putting one foot in front of the other for charities, many of whom have never run long distances before they signed up to do this\u2019 (Getty)<\/p>\n

Watching the London Marathon is the most inspiring day in the capital. Thousands upon thousands of people, each putting one foot in front of the other for charities, many of whom have never run long distances before they signed up to do this. My friend, the If Not For You author Georgina Lucas, is running for Tommy\u2019s, the charity that helped her and her husband after the premature birth of their late son, Grey. Another friend has raised over \u00a35,000 for the Suicide Network in memory of her late brother. Watching them somehow fit in their lengthy training has been truly incredible; arguably more so than those for whom exercise forms part of their career, although those achievements are impressive.<\/p>\n

And watching it, you are reminded that there is no one type of runner: blind, in a wheelchair, amputee, thin, fat, tall, small, black, white or brown. Anyone and everyone straps on their trainers, at every age, too. Last year, 3,818 runners were aged over 60. Forty were over 80! <\/p>\n

However much brands and adverts seek to sell exercise as something expensive and aspirational, there are plenty of people quietly doing it their way. Just look at the uproar that greeted Nike\u2019s rather tone-deaf billboards<\/a> in London parkrun locations, declaiming \u201cYou didn\u2019t come all this way for a walk in the park.\u201d It\u2019s none of your business who\u2019s walking, thank you very much!<\/p>\n

As a new intake of Marathon runners prepares to do something extraordinary, my heartiest congratulations go to every one of them. Walk, jog, run or roll: the only \u201ctype\u201d of runner is the one who\u2019s got the determination to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As thousands of Britons check their trainers ready for today\u2019s London Marathon, for those of us watching, it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[49,48,407,84],"class_list":{"0":"post-631218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fitness","11":"tag-health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}