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London Marathon FAQs

If you can’t find the answer to your question here, feel free to contact the Events team by emailing events@thebraintumourcharity.org or calling 01252 237867.

Running for The Brain Tumour Charity

If you successfully apply for one of our Gold Bond places, we do ask for a registration fee of £50. This is to help towards our costs and is non-refundable and non-transferable under any circumstances

We’ll support you through every step of your marathon journey, with your dedicated contact, Beth giving you one-to-one support with fundraising.

As well as this you can look forward to the below:

  • Physical training support from team coach (we know it’s more than just putting one foot in front of the other!).
  • membership of our closed Facebook group for only The Brain Tumour Charity team – introduce yourself to the rest of the runners, you are all one big family by when it comes to the big day!
  • A free personalised charity running vest.
  • An invite to our London Marathon training webinar with a specialist marathon coach to answer all your training needs throughout your journey.
  • Cheer points around the Marathon route to help motivate you towards the finish line.
  • An invitation for you, family and friends to come and celebrate with at our post-race Runner’s Reception – including free massages, access to showers and some and drink

Charity place runners: Your running vest will be ordered for you once your registration fee has been paid. Typical delivery times are 3-5 working days.

Own place runners: Your running vest will be ordered for you when you let us know your size and the best address to send it to. If you’d like it personalised with a name or nickname for the front of your vest let us know too. Typical delivery times are 3 – 5 working days.

Tell us if you have an own place

Yes, we will have at least 3 cheer points on route, find our where we’ll be below

Cheer Points

Yes! We will be hosting a post-race reception for runners to come and celebrate. You will be able to come and celebrate with friends and family. We will have a celebratory glass of bubbly and food for all runners, free massages and showers for you to freshen up!

The Event

All participants in the TCS London Marathon must be aged 18 or older on Marathon Day – you will be asked to confirm your age when you enter the event.

The London Marathon welcomes the use of standard wheelchairs and race runners in the mass participation event.

Free places for guides and support runners are issued where necessary. Guides and support runners will receive a finisher’s medal, t-shirt and goody bag when they cross the line.

All participants must complete the event by the official cut off time.

Participants must collect their running number in person at the TCS London Marathon Running Show, which will be held at the ExCeL Centre, London the week before the Marathon (23-26 April 2025). If you are unable to collect it in person, you can ask someone to collect it on your behalf as long as you provide them with the collect documentation as outlined by the TCS London Marathon event organisers.

TCS London Marathon Running Show: To collect your race number you will need photographic ID and your QR code sent to you via email when you complete your registration with the event organisers of the London Marathon,

TCS London Marathon: Be ready to run! You can also be waiting at the start for a long time, so wear some clothing you don’t mind taking off and leaving to donate to charity. Pack some comfy shoes and warm clothes in your bag drop so you can have these at the end of the marathon too.

We recommend you leave your bags with friends and family or at your accommodation. Runners will be able to use the bag drop on the day and be able to collect a bag at the finish. There are, however, size restrictions to this (all items must fit in draw string bag provided at TCS London Marathon Running Show).

If the event is cancelled, we will work with the event organisers of the TCS London Marathon and charity place runners to establish what will happen moving forwards. We will keep the team informed with updates as and when we have them

In the event that you have a Gold Bond place and the TCS London Marathon 2025 is postponed or cancelled, we will work with you and London Marathon Events to help transfer your place to the rescheduled event or a future TCS London Marathon.

If you feel unwell at the event, you should seek medical help from medical staff at the event.

If you feel unwell the morning of the event and are unable to take part, please let us know as soon as possible. Deferrals may be discussed at this point, however it is only something we can do under exceptional circumstances.

No, we know that every runner goes at a different pace – we will be with you from the start of the race all the way until you cross that finish line! Our cheer points will cheer on absolutely every runner no matter their time. However, the event organisers advise that runners will only be eligible for a medal and to feature in the results if they complete the course before the official cut off time. The official cut off time will be released by the event organisers closer to the event date.

No, but we highly recommend taking part in a half marathon before you take on a full marathon. Our team coach says that it is ideal to be able to get three runs around 18 miles before the race – whether these are training runs or events is up to you.

Of course! Do let us know what you are planning as we may be able to help and notify the organisers and see what we can do to support this.

Gold Bond place: If you have a Gold Bond place YOU MUST TELL US you are withdrawing. As the place belongs to The Charity we have to be the ones to withdraw any places and we may be able to offer this place to another runner. So let us know if you are no longer able to take part. The Charity assesses deferrals on a case-by-case basis and can only offer deferrals under exceptional circumstances.

Own place: if you wish to defer your ballot place, you must complete the deferral process as laid out by London Marathon Events. Please visit the event website to find out full details. We’d still love you to run for us the following year, so please let us know too.

Fundraising

We ask all our Charity/Gold Bond place runners to raise a minimum of £2,700 for their TCS London Marathon place (excluding Gift Aid).

If The Charity doesn’t receive any funds from you by 1 February 2025, we reserve the right to remove your details from the London Marathon registration console and withdraw your place. This will only happen with prior warning or unless agreed otherwise.

If you are successful in being allocated a Gold Bond place, you must run in support and fundraise for only that charity. However if you have a ballot place, you can run and fundraise for multiple charities if you wish.

We recommend using online fundraising pages for The TCS London Marathon. The official fundraising partner for the Event is Enthuse but we also recommend JustGiving.

We do ask that you take the minimum sponsorship seriously, but if you are worried about hitting the minimum sponsorship target we are here to help! We will support you every step of the way and will help give you lots of ideas to make sure you are on track with your fundraising! We do ask that your first donations are received by 1 February 2025 but don’t require the full £2,700 (excluding Gift Aid)  until 1 May 2025, so we would encourage you to continue fundraising after the event as we know up to 20% of donations are made at this time.