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Kate Neale crossing the finish line at the Belfast Marathon in 2019.
‘A sea of positivity’: older women boost London Marathon numbers
Pandemic, daily pressures and Paula Radcliffe cited as reasons for 65% rise in over-50 female runners
The science of running marathons as an older person. demographic change is really noticeable and has created an atmosphere that’s just a sea of positivity, where finishing times are only one of many motivations for taking part.”
In 2020, when the race was run virtually because of the Covid pandemic, the number of men and women running were equal for the first time. Brasher suggested many of those women may have been older runners who felt able to give the marathon a go for the first time when it was held out of the spotlight. And now they are attending the real thing.
Kate Neale, 60, will be running the marathon on Sunday – followed by the Dublin marathon a month later. She did her first 26.2-mile race in Brighton in 2018 and completed Belfast the following year.
“I started running when I was 47 and needed some headspace that was cheap and quick,” she said. “I was quite unusual then but I’m not now: in my local running club, the majority of beginners are women, and more of them are in their 40s and older.”
Brasher puts the increase in older female runners down to a combination of factors, the earliest being Paula Radcliffe’s 2003 historic completion of the London Marathon.
“Many women who are running now in their 50s were inspired to start in their 30s when Radcliffe showed them that running was possible,” he said.
As 2019: Anya Culling ran her first-ever marathon in 4 hours 34 minutes🏃♀️
2022: She ran the London Marathon in 2 hours 36 minutes
2024: She ran the London Marathon in the Elite category the 16th woman to cross the finish line
Huge progress!
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