It would not be marathon season without a blog on long distance running from your’s truly. The game changer is that I have discovered a new strand to my marathon training schedule: Spectating.

I am late to yet another party and I do wish someone had shared this wisdom with me earlier. I have some catching up to do, but then I am used to this in my running ‘career’.

Spectating is not for the faint-hearted; look away now if you are not up for endurance work. Like the marathon runners, you are expected to be up at the crack of sparrow on the day of the event and – as this particular spectating fest is taking place in London – you have to battle with public transport, the weather and a lack of public toilets. However, having entered a marathon or two in my former life (refer to my back catalogue if you must, but I feel sure you will remember me banging on about them) I feel I do have the resilience needed to embrace this new challenge.

Being new to this sport of spectating, I enrol the services of a veteran – Favourite Daughter (FD). She is a seasoned campaigner, honed by a childhood of standing in the freezing cold cheering her over-ambitious mother around many a half marathon and marathon course. Not only is she an excellent ‘spotter’ – she exacted the art of spotting her mother in the distance long before a tracking app was invented – but she also has a hearty set of lungs (it is no good spotting your runner of choice and not being able to alert them to the fact that you are standing in the crowd freezing your bits off and rooting for them). She is also flipping good company. If you are going to stand by the road for hours, you need good chat. We decide to allow her chap to join us for he can also tell a yarn or two and he takes great photos.

I should point out that I do have a vested interest in this particular marathon and did not just select the event selfishly for my first spectating opportunity. No, Favourite Son (FS) and his lovely girl friend agree to provide some running interest for my first spectating event by running this, their first marathon, for #alifeforacure. They have always been supportive of my running efforts and it is typical of their selflessness that they agree to provide two moving targets on which I can train my amateur spectator eye. If my spotting skills prove rubbish and I miss one of them running past, at least I may get a second attempt.

FD is a brutal coach. She restricts me to one takeaway coffee only, opining that my geriatric bladder will tear me from the course at the very moment our targets are running past. She then pushes me to the front of the crowd, reminding me that my tech know-how is so limited that the London Marathon tracking app will be another distraction and will only buffer for this duffer. She decides that I will be better off hanging over the rail in the hope that I can actually recognise my son when he eventually appears. She does not allow me snacks – saying – as she munches on her breakfast panini – that they will only be another distraction and that my step count is too minimal to justify the calories.

I begin to wonder if it might be easier to run the race. This new sport does involve a lot of hanging around and there is a nip in the air.

The crowd are brilliant though. Back in the day I once worked in London and it would have been a blast to commute through crowds like this one. Everyone is so polite and cheerful – sharing their snacks (unlike FD) and comparing their own marathon stories. I learn that spectating has its own rules and soon FD has shown me how to seamlessly negotiate myself into the optimum spectator spots, picking off families who have just cheered their relative through and now look set to shift to another location. FD’s chap is there behind us, phone at the ready to capture the moment FS high fives the whole of Tower Bridge on his way past – and thankfully he is still there to take another photo when FS realises he has totally ignored his mother and loops back to humour me.

Anyway, this is not the time to bore you with my new marathon experiences – you have my archive for this. Let us just say that on Sunday I discover facial muscles and a set of lungs never tested when I have been bimbling through my own events. I am reminded how much I love being a mother and how sometimes, you get more out of seeing others suffer (this may be an oxymoron, I am still getting the hang of parenting). My face hurts (in a nice way) from spending the day besides FD and my eyes prove a little leaky knowing that FS and his girlfriend have just joined a very exclusive club. Now is not the time to note that they are very late to this party, or to ask FD if she is considering membership next year.

My calves are a tad tense as I walk back to the tube and start the trek homewards, but it feels churlish to mention this to my son who is still cramping at the finish line. I am emotionally spent, and in need of coffee – I am also still grinning in a quite unnerving fashion.

On the tube back to Hammersmith I I sit besides another proud parent (recognisable by the huge matching grin on his face) and we exchange spectating tips and list our personal top 5 energy gels (you have to make your own entertainment on the District Line). We then catch each other looking at Strava and admit that we may need to take a break from spectating to sneak in our own running events later in the season. I tell you, it is not for the faint-hearted this spectating lark. Clearly a marathon not a sprint.