- A woman finished the London Marathon in her wedding dress to honor her late husband.
- The woman and her friend ran to raise money for blood cancer research.
- Costumes aren't uncommon in marathons and other road races.
Costumes aren’t uncommon in marathons and other road races but rarely does a runner cross the finish line in a wedding gown.
Laura Coleman-Day pulled her wedding dress over her running clothes for the last three miles of the London Marathon to honor her late husband, who died of blood cancer. She took part in the 26.2-mile Sunday as part of a challenge to run 13 marathons in 12 months to raise money for Anthony Nolan, a charity dedicated to blood cancer research, according to the BBC.
She said completing the April 27 marathon, which fell on what would have been her sixth wedding anniversary, was “absolutely amazing.”
Coleman-Day ran with her friend Kate Walford, who is also running multiple marathons for her best friend who she lost to the disease. She said running in the dress was “hot” but she managed to finish.
“The crowds, the atmosphere and running with one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met,” she said.
Her husband, Xander, died last year from post-transplant complications after developing acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a rare type of cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow, per the BBC.
Running for a cause
Coleman-Day talked about her husband and why she is running in an Instagram video two weeks before the race. “The only thought that’s going to be going through my mind is him,” she said.
Sunday’s race was her 13th in the past year to raise money for Anthony Nolan.
“They were doing a lot of research into post-transplant and I didn’t want anybody else to go through what me and my son have gone through,” Coleman-Day told the BBC.
Walford ran in memory of her friend Mark, who died in 2018 after getting leukemia for the second time.
“Watching Laura step into her wedding dress at mile 23 was such an emotional moment, reminding me what she has been through,” she told the BBC. “We crossed the line together and did Xander and Mark proud.”
Playing dress up
While Coleman-Day had a poignant reason to don a wedding dress in a marathon, runners wear costumes for a variety of reasons, including fundraising, bringing awareness to a cause — as she did — and just for fun or to express themselves. Some runners dress up as a way to connect with spectators and encourage other runners on the course.
Races run at Halloween encourage costumes. Online retailers offer running garb of all kinds from an inflatable chicken to a Forrest Gump getup.
Among the 30,000 runners at the iconic Boston Marathon last week, there was a Princess Leia, a Chiquita banana, a leprechaun, a Larry Bird and a “Where’s Waldo.”
And it’s not just marathons. Runners dress up for 10K races and half-marathons, too.
A 2010 article in Runner’s World floated several theories about the costume phenomenon.
Write and runner Mark Remy offered these possibilities:
No one has costume parties anymore. Today, it’s much harder to get your costume fix. Hence costumes in marathons, the largest of which have sort of become parties anyway.
Increasingly crowded marathons = increasing lack of individuality. Standing around at the start of a big race can fill you with existential despair; it’s hard not to feel like just another face in the crowd. Unless you’re wearing pigtails, a blue-checked dress and ruby slippers!
Marathoners are getting slower. Today, fewer runners care about finishing times. For them, the marathon is less a foot race and more a 26.2-mile Mardi Gras. Why not dress up?
Costumes aren’t more common — digital cameras and Social media are. Everyone and his mother also has a Facebook page, Twitter feed and accounts on Flickr, Tumblr and Digg, not to mention blogs (ahem), and is dying to use those to share all the wacky, clever things they’ve noticed.
