If you have applied for a place in the London Marathon, the moment of truth is coming up - you will find out whether you are in or not at the start of December. From then till April you will enter a new world, one of long, chilly training runs and self-denial in the wine bar, one where what really counts in life is the merits of energy gels and knee supports. For marathon virgins, it can all seem a bit daunting - which is where the web can help.
Would-be Antonio Pintos and Liz McColgans seeking online advice and support will find a crowded field, with half a dozen fast, well-maintained sites, lots of slow and useless ones and a few that are really weird - pretty much like the marathon itself. The official site www.london-marathon.co.uk has a well-tested training programme for beginners, but is a bit thin in content so far. A slightly more inspiring place is www.adidas.co.uk running , though if you are serious about using the web as a coaching aid, head for www.halhigdon.com. or www.jeff-galloway.com
Both offer a selection of schedules to suit all aspirations and talents. However, if your physique is more Mr Blobby than Maurice Greene, Vanessa Feltz rather than Kathy Freeman, go to www.waddleon.com. This is home to the Penguin, aka Runner's World columnist John Bingham. His site champions the porky, the knock-kneed, the pigeon-toed and all those whose enthusiasm outsoars their running ability. It's both wacky and inspirational.
These three, and www.ontherun.com are US sites, which tend to be livelier and better maintained than UK ones, though the American bias diminishes their appeal. This is also true of the newsgroup rec.running, which produces some very entertaining rants and flame wars, but tends to cold-shoulder posters not based in the US.
Wearing a British vest is www.onrunning.com which with news, e-commerce, forums and advice contains plenty for the running-obsessed. On the down side, its speed makes it unlikely to survive beyond the heats.
An essential site for the London build-up is operated by the magazine, Runner's World, at www.runnersworld.co.uk - it contains an excellent online race diary. The US Runner's World site has all the flaws and virtues of its compatriots, but is useful for its shoe reviews, which on the principle that anything happening in the US will shortly happen over here should be consulted for advance warning on any trainer turkeys.
For those looking to for a local running club to give them help, company and motivation, www.runtrackdir.com/ukclubs is a good place to start searching.
Most running clubs now have their own sites, although as they are infrequently updated and boast a design as racy as woodchip wallpaper, they tend to be useful only as a source of contacts.
At www.serpentine.org.uk is a much more lavish effort that compares favourably with many commercial sites - its popularity can be gauged by the fact that it had 79,000 hits last month alone.
Basically these are the home pages of the Hyde Park-based Serpentine Running Club but even non-Londoners will find it well worth bookmarking, since it boasts an excellent Beginner's Guide to Running, a treasury of articles by coaching legend Frank Horwill, a guide to London routes, a race planner and diary for races in the London area, and a London Marathon section.
If you want to download a training log rather than just record distances and times in the traditional way in a dog-eared exercise book, one of the best is RunLog4Web (See www.pegasussoftware.com).
Meanwhile, really keen runners, the sort whose trainers are the first thing to go into the suitcase when packing for a trip abroad, should bookmark the strangely compulsive www.runtheplanet.com, a runners' labour of love which offers descriptions of "where to run and walk in the cities of the whole world, told by locals and for you to use while you are away from home".
Descriptions range from the blindingly obvious ("In London you can go to any of the larger parks. Battersea Park is one of them.") to some highly detailed and carefully thought-out routes, complete with distance and terrain.
One feature of training for the London Marathon is the way it takes over your life. Rather than inflict your obsessive ruminations about weekly training mileage and the merits of sorbothane insoles on family, friends and colleagues, you should consider subscribing to an online mailing list. UKRunning at not only has an interesting selection of links to e-zines and e-commerce but will also invite you to subscribe to the UKRunning list, which has a membership of runners of all standards from tortoise to hare.
Those who want more hardcore discussion of the London Marathon will find it on londonmarathon-subscribe@egroups.com. These are easily the runner's best source of online information, encouragement, humour and genuine help, all in a format that doesn't get you sacked at work for browsing the web all day long.
