I Just Got Into The London Marathon - What Do I Do Next?

You Got Into the London Marathon 2027 — Here's Exactly What To Do Between Now and December

If your inbox pinged this morning and it wasn't a "we're sorry" email, congratulations. You're one of a very small percentage of people who applied for the 2027 TCS London Marathon ballot to actually get a place — and this year, with over 1.3 million applications for around 30,000 ballot spots, that's roughly a 2% chance of getting in. So take a second before you do anything else. Actually let that sink in. You're in.

Now, before you go and download the first 16-week plan you find on Google and start smashing out 10-milers this weekend — stop. That's the single biggest mistake I see runners make after ballot day, and it's the one thing I want this article to help you avoid.

Here's the thing most people don't realise: you don't need a marathon training plan yet. The 2027 London Marathon is being run over two days for the first time ever — Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th April 2027 — which means your actual marathon-specific training block won't start until January at the earliest. That gives you a five-month window between now and Christmas that, if you use it properly, will make the difference between limping round in April and running the race of your life.

I've been coaching runners through London Marathon cycles since I set up PGC1-Coaching in 2019, and the athletes who arrive at January in the best shape are never the ones who panicked in July and front-loaded their mileage. They're the ones who used this exact period — July to December — to build a platform underneath them. So let's talk about what that actually looks like.

First Things First: Sort the Admin

Before anything training-related, get the boring stuff out of the way:

- Confirm and pay for your place if you haven't already — there's usually a deadline, so don't sit on this.

- Check which day you've been allocated. With the two-day format this year, you'll be randomly assigned Saturday or Sunday, so make sure you know which one before you start telling everyone you're running "the London Marathon on Sunday 26th April" — it might not be.

- Book any annual leave you'll need around race week now, while the diary's still empty.

- Tell your support network. Whoever's going to be putting up with early alarms and long Sunday runs for the next nine months deserves a heads up sooner rather than later.

Why July to December Actually Matters

A lot of runners treat the months before marathon training as a bit of a no-man's-land — either they do nothing and hope for the best, or they try to get a head start by doing too much, too soon. Both approaches tend to end the same way: injury, burnout, or a training block in January that starts from behind rather than from strength.

I'm a big believer that consistent, well-structured training layered on top of a genuinely aerobic base is what actually produces results — not heroic individual sessions. Your aerobic system is the engine for everything that comes later: your threshold work, your marathon-pace sessions, your long runs in the cold and dark come February. If that engine isn't built properly now, no amount of race-specific training in January will fully make up for it.

Think of these five months as laying foundations for a house. Nobody gets excited about foundations. But skip them, and the whole thing gets a lot shakier once you start building upwards.

Your London Marathon Roadmap: July to December

July–August: Rebuild Your Running Habit, Properly

If you've been running consistently already, this is your chance to nudge weekly mileage up gradually and get comfortable running little and often. If you've been more sporadic, this is where you rebuild the habit without any pressure — three to four easy runs a week, all conversational pace, nothing that leaves you gasping.

This is also the ideal window to get any niggles sorted. That tight calf or grumbling knee you've been "managing" for the last year? Now's the time to see a physio, not in February when you're mid-block and can't afford two weeks off.

September: Introduce Some Structure

Once the running habit is solid, this is where a bit of variety earns its place — some strides, a bit of gentle hill work, maybe your first taste of interval training if you haven't done any in a while. I like blending different types of sessions rather than hammering the same session week after week; it keeps things fresh and develops different physiological qualities at once, which pays dividends later.

This is also a great month to build strength work into your week. Two short sessions of runner-specific strength training will do more for your injury resilience over the next nine months than almost anything else on this list, and it's the piece most self-coached marathoners skip entirely.

October: Test Yourself With a Tune-Up Race

A 10K or a half marathon in October is brilliant for two reasons. First, it gives you a genuine fitness benchmark heading into the winter, which is far more useful than guessing your paces from an app algorithm. Second, it reminds your body and mind what race-day nerves and pacing discipline feel like, without the stakes of it being the big one.

Autumn is genuinely one of my favourite times of year to coach — the roads are quiet, the weather's kind, and there's a good calendar of half marathons and 10Ks across the UK to use as staging posts.

November: Build the Volume, Sensibly

By now you should be running more frequently and a little further than you were in July, with your long run creeping up in a controlled way — think small, steady increases, not doubling your longest run in a fortnight. This is the month to nail your fuelling strategy on longer efforts too, so that by January you already know what works for your stomach rather than experimenting for the first time with 18 miles to go.

December: Consolidate, Don't Panic

Christmas parties, dark mornings, and everyone else's motivation dipping around you — December tests consistency more than any other month on this list. The goal here isn't to peak. It's simply to keep the wheels turning through the festive period so that when your proper 12–16 week marathon block begins in January, you're stepping onto solid ground rather than starting from scratch after three weeks off.

The Mistakes I See Most Often

- Going from zero to hero in July because the ballot email gave you a rush of motivation. That rush needs channelling into consistency, not intensity.

- Ignoring strength training until an injury forces the issue in February.

- Comparing your July mileage to someone else's Instagram. Every runner's starting point in July is different — what matters is your trajectory, not anyone else's number.

- Waiting until January to think about fuelling, shoes, or niggles. All three are far easier to sort out now, with no pressure, than mid-block.

You Don't Have to Figure This Out Alone

Honestly, this period — the five months before the "official" training block — is where a lot of marathon runners quietly go wrong, simply because there's no obvious structure telling them what to do. A generic 16-week plan downloaded off the internet won't cover July to December at all, because it isn't designed to.

This is exactly the gap that individualised coaching fills. At PGC1-Coaching, this is where we spend a lot of our time with athletes heading into a spring marathon — building that aerobic base, working in strength and mobility, choosing the right tune-up races, and making sure your training fits around your actual life rather than a generic template that assumes you've got nothing else going on. If you'd like a second opinion on your plan for the next five months, or you'd simply rather not be guessing, we run free 30-minute consultations to talk through your goals and see whether our approach is the right fit for you.

Whatever route you take from here — coached or self-directed — the principle stays the same: what you do between now and December will quietly decide how your marathon block, and your race, actually goes. Enjoy this bit. Build it properly, and January will feel a lot less daunting.

Congratulations again for getting into what will be an incredible weekend of Marathon running and we look forward to seeing you out on the course!

This blog was written for the PGC1-Coaching website by Joshua Schofield. Josh is the Head Coach and Founder of PGC1-Coaching. With a background as a sport and exercise scientist and former international athlete; Josh has developed a deep understanding of sports science and endurance coaching. Josh leads the PGC1 team with a passion for helping athletes of all abilities reach their potential. His coaching philosophy blends evidence-based training with a personalised, athlete-first approach.