We have now picked the winner for the adidas Virgin London Marathon competition which ended in December 2009. The lucky winner was Justin Sanderson, Justin will be entering the London Marathon with his friend Mike Bullock. We will keep you posted on how they both get on after the event. Below is Justin’s reaction to winning the competition.

Congratulations Justin!

I got the mail-shot from Wiggle about applying to enter the draw for the Adidas sponsored London Marathon places, and to be honest I usually ignore that kind of thing,… I had a spare 5 minutes so replied as in the ad, and was really chuffed to get a place!! I NEVER win stuff like that!! As soon as I found out I went and bought a couple of Lucky Dips in the Lottery, just in case!!

Anyway, rewind three years, and I was a lazy fat git, I weighed about 17stone, smoked 40 fags a day, drank lots and ate junk. I had a fast-track pass to a heart-attack. Myself and my mate Mike kept doing daft things, playing tricks on each other and generally seeing who could think of the best prank; for example, after a long hard hike in the Peak District he said to me “Can I have my brick back now, please”… He’d slipped a house brick in my rucksack back at the car!! Git!! I repaid him by buying his kids the noisiest and most annoying Xmas presents I could find… itching powder, whoopee cushions etc. Anyway, I’m waffling, Mike, who is a good distance runner, entered me into the Wilmslow Half Marathon in Jan 07, bearing in mind I was unable to run a kilometre. I joined a running club and trained three or four times a week, and hit my target time of 2 hours, still smoking and drinking.

I then got a bit ambitious, and entered a full marathon without realising quite what I was taking on. I still smoked 40 a day and drank too much, and actually took a couple of cigarettes and a lighter in the race with me as I couldn’t go five hours without a smoke!! It was a suffer fest, I was completely under-prepared, walked most of it past mile 16, and took over 5 and a half hours.

I then decided another marathon was WAYYYY too far, so had a go at a couple of sprint triathlons… My god triathlon is addictive, almost as addictive as Wiggling and waiting for that little cardboard box of presents to arrive every week! (Is it just me or is Wiggle a really good way of getting free deliveries of Haribos to your door???) Anyway, from sprint tris to training camps, to half ironmans and then the full ironman distance last October (with a slipped disc!!), stopping smoking, losing weight and getting a whole lot fitter, healthier and happier along the way, as well as making some of my best friends through the sport. I’ve got anther couple of Ironman races planned this year, in some really cool parts of the world.

I’ve never got into the London Marathon, so this will be really special, and excellent training for my races later in the year (though don’t expect an impressive time!!)… My life has completely changed from three years ago, and none of what I’ve achieved and experienced in that time would have been possible if Mike hadn’t got me to do that half marathon, which is why I’m particularly pleased to be able to take him along with me, just to say thanks in a small way, with the amount of kit I’ve bought, Wiggle should thank him too!!! :o)

Justin Sanderson

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Competitions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.