Fundraising connected to this weekend’s London Marathon has been “accelerating nicely since people came back since the summer holidays”, its organiser has said.
The London Marathon returns in person this Sunday and about 40,000 will take part. A further 40,000 will run their own virtual race during the day.
Hugh Brasher, event director, said he expects: “Sunday 3 October will be a day of togetherness.”
The most recent full marathon, which took place in April 2019, raised a record £66.4m for charities. It has broken its fundraising record every race for over ten years.
But when asked how charity fundraising was going this year, Brasher said it was too early to say how this year’s efforts compared with pre-pandemic years.
He explained: “One of the difficulties you have this year is that the time of the year makes things very different.
“When people are away over the summer holidays they tend not to do so much fundraising, so actually it suddenly accelerated when they came back in September.”
He also said that with the virtual event, a lot of the fundraising tended to happen a lot later than with people who taking part in London race.
A third issue is that some people were fundraising ahead of the April 2020 race, which did not happen, paused their fundraising before restarting them for this year’s delayed event.
“It’s honestly too early to say, I think post-event we will be able to understand, but we know it’s been accelerating nicely since people came back since the summer holidays,” Brasher said.
‘We are absolutely a spring marathon’
This year and next year the event is taking place in the autumn, because the organisers wanted to be able to provide certainty for participants around what would be possible.
In the long-term it will remain a spring marathon and is due to return to the April slot in 2023.
Speaking yesterday, Brasher said: “We absolutely are a spring marathon.”
He said next year’s race had been moved the autumn to provide certainty for everyone involved in case the Covid-19 situation changes over the winter.
“But we look forward to being back in spring in April 2023 in what we would say is our rightful place as a spring marathon and welcoming and inspiring people in a new year to get fit and to get healthy,” he said.
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