A group of lads missed out on a spot in the London Marathon so ran the course overnight the day before - with no training. Josh Goddard, 28, tried to get a place in the race via the ballot and by applying through charities - but failed to secure a spot.
Not the be disheartened, Josh instead decided the Thursday before the marathon to run the full route in the dead of night - finishing just as the official marathon kicked off. He was joined by his pals - Daniel Munrow, 28, a surveyor, Sean Murphy, 28, a solicitor, and Alex Peel, 28, a recruiter.
The group completed the 26.2-mile route in four hours and 10 minutes - stopping for water breaks along the way - with people coming home drunk from a night out cheering them on. Josh, a building surveyor, from Kentisbeare, Devon, said: “It was amazing.
"People were stood outside McDonald's after a night out cheering us on, we had so, many drunk people shouting and motivating us."
When Josh came up with the idea he sent a WhatsApp message to his mates - asking if anyone else was up for it and to his surprise three of his friends were.
Amazingly, none of them had done any training at all - with Sean having never done any running in his life. Josh said: "Sean rocked up in trail running shoes and Chelsea football shorts, he’d basically never done a run before."
The four started the race at 2am on April 21 at the Mall in St James’ Park - where the official marathon ends - and set off running the entire route in reverse.
The lads spent all week getting up as early as possible so they’d be able to get some sleep super early on Saturday night – but did not go on any runs to prepare themselves.
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Josh said: “We stopped off at a couple of Shell garages along the way to pick up supplies and energy bars. Obviously we didn’t have the tables where they hand out water and energy bars. It was amazing, everyone we passed was cheering us on, I think a lot of people were very confused.
“Because it was Saturday morning in the early hours, there were just loads of drunk people all around London who we were running past, it was quite an experience.”
Josh, Daniel, and Alex finished together with a very respectable time of four hours and 10 minutes. For Sean, however, the task was a bit more gruelling and he finally came home around the five-hour mark at 8am – just as the official marathon was getting under way.
Josh said: “Once the three of us finished, we then hopped on Lime bikes and went back to cheer Sean on as he was struggling.”
The four then headed to Gail's bakery for breakfast before heading to the pub for pints of Guinness. They quickly headed home to shower and then came back out to cheer on the official marathon runners.
Josh - who ran the Amsterdam Marathon in 2022 - used to be more into running, but had last done a run around Christmas time. Josh said: "Everyone's been really impressed with the combo of us running at night and with minimal training - it was an amazing weekend. We’re all a little bit sore now though, I don’t know if we’ll do anything like that again."