Morning endurance fans…

Saturday morning, and the countdown is on.

The streets are ready, the crowds are gathering, and one of the greatest races on earth is almost here. The London Marathon returns tomorrow, bringing with it world-class elites, emotional first-timers, fancy dress heroes and the unmistakable roar of the UK’s capital.

Whether you’re racing, tracking, spectating or simply soaking up the magic, we’ve got everything you could need ahead of the big day — key contenders, start times, route details, stories to watch and all the essentials for marathon morning.

The London Marathon weekend has arrived. 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️🇬🇧.

Here’s what we have lined up for you today…

🤒 ILLNESS: Gregory Barnaby was missing from today’s T100 race in Singapore after struggling with illness at IRONMAN South Africa. Read HERE.

🇺🇸 WINNING: Could Matthew Marquardt be the first American athlete to win the IRONMAN World Championships since way back in 2002? Read HERE.

😬 TERRIFIED: Last week’s winner at IRONMAN Texas, Solveig Løvseth, admits it was ‘terrifying’ to lead the race for so long on her own. Read HERE.

🎽 TIMING: Sharon Lokedi defended her Boston Marathon crown earlier this week, but had to borrow a watch after forgetting to wear hers. Read HERE.

👋 WELCOME: The Professional Triathlon Organisation (PTO) announced this week that Peter Hutton will become its new chairman. Read HERE.

It may be a new T100 season, but it was a case of the same old Hayden Wilde as he picked up from where he left off last year and dominated the opening race in Singapore.

Billed as the battle between himself and Australian short course champion, Matt Hauser, in truth, there was never even a challenger to Wilde’s supremacy as the T100 World Champion soloed all the way to the finish line.

Britain’s Sam Dickinson was a distant, but still impressive second, while Germany’s Mikka Noodt took third place. Hauser was back in fifth place.

A month later than planned, the 2026 WTCS season burst into life this morning as Olympic-distance triathlon’s finest headed to Uzbekistan.

With the opening race in Abu Dhabi being postponed due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, Samarkand will instead launch the new season as it makes its WTCS debut as one of nine other races on the calendar.

The Olympic qualifying window hasn’t quite opened yet, but there were still some superb elite athletes lining up this morning, especially on the women’s side.

Sadly, the women’s race was dealt an early-morning blow when Olympic champion Cassandre Beaugrand pulled out due to illness. Leonie Periault, who recorded six WTCS top-five placings last season, would instead lead the French team.

Germany’s women started the 2025 WTCS season with a clean sweep of the podium in Abu Dhabi, and they ended it with Lisa Tertsch becoming world champion for the first time. She is back in action here and joined by the two compatriots who were second and third to her in Abu Dhabi – Nina Eim and Laura Lindemann.

Georgia Taylor-Brown, the most decorated Olympic female athlete, lined up for Britain in her first standard distance WTCS race since 2024 after finishing runner-up in the Lanzarote World Cup.

Beth Potter, the 2023 World Champion and double bronze medallist at Paris 2024, joins her, as does Jess Fullagar, who made such a splash at the T100 Gold Coast last month.

The American team is five-strong and topped by Taylor Spivey, who is joined by 2016 Olympic champ Gwen Jorgensen, Danielle Orie, Erica Ackerlund and Kirsten Kasper.

Unlike the women’s race, the three biggest names in this sphere of the sport – Alex Yee, Hayden Wilde and Matt Hauser are all missing.

Yee is pacing at the London Marathon tomorrow, while Wilde and Hauser were in T100 action in Singapore. But their omissions will mean that opportunity will most certainly knock for someone today as the WTCS finally gets underway in 2026.

IRONMAN 70.3 World Champion, Lucy Charles-Barclay, is set to race in her first triathlon of the season today as she completes her recovery from injury at the Club La Santa Volcano Triathlon.

Held in Tinajo on the island of Lanzarote, the region is also known as the triathlon training playground for pros and amateurs alike, and LCB is using these familiar surroundings to ease back into competition after undergoing surgery in January.

The British athlete went under the scalpel to have a plantaris tendon removed, and only announced her return to full-on running earlier this month.

She is joined in the field by the now-retired German Anne Haug, who has won four races on the island in her glittering career, and who beat LCB into second place at the 2019 IRONMAN World Championships at Kona.

With over 10,000 athletes on the start line, one of the world’s largest triathlons, Challenge Taiwan, delivered exciting racing across both the men’s and the women’s fields.

Kieran Storch (AUS) successfully defended his title, and Julie Derron (SUI) took a convincing win in the women’s race, while behind them, thousands of age group athletes achieved their finish line goals.

After the thrills and spills of Texas, South Africa and Valencia last week, there are once again three IRONMAN races taking place this weekend as the focus turns to South America and the 70.3s in Brasilia (Brazil), Los Cabos (Mexico), and Lima (Peru). Los Cabos is not a pro race, but the other two are.

All three races take place tomorrow.

The 71st annual Three Peaks Race – a UTMB Index race – was due to start this morning at 10.30 UK time. Former double Olympic champion Alistair Brownlee finished third last year.

The TCS London Marathon is always a special race, and this year’s 46th edition is no exception, with stacked elite fields and FOUR defending champions returning.

⏰ START TIMES: There are three key start times tomorrow:

📺 HOW TO WATCH: The BBC are the go-to broadcaster for watching the race. Those in the UK will have start-to-finish live coverage on BBC One, while worldwide you can follow on the iPlayer.

In the United States, Canada and Australia, there’s live coverage on Flotrack, and for the rest of the world, the full details are HERE.

📍 COURSE: The TCS London Marathon starts in Blackheath and ends at The Mall in front of Buckingham Palace, one of the most iconic finishes imaginable.

The route takes in many of London’s most famous landmarks, including Tower Bridge, at close to the halfway point. It is relatively flat and actually a net downhill race – 127 metres of ‘climbing’ and 162 metres of downhill.

❓ WHO’S THERE? Let’s take a look at some of the stars who will be gracing the streets of London this weekend.

👨‍🦽‍➡️ WHEELCHAIR: Swiss superstar Marcel Hug will be bidding for another record at this year’s TCS London Marathon – fresh from his dominant win in Boston on Monday.

The man known as the Silver Bullet tops the elite wheelchair fields and is aiming to draw level with British Paralympic hero David Weir with a historic eighth victory in London.

Weir himself will be one of the athletes looking to stop Hug’s seemingly unstoppable path to history. Also up against him once again are last year’s second and third-placed athletes, Tomoki Suzuki (JPN) and Jetze Plat (NED).

In the elite women’s wheelchair race, another dominant Swiss athlete heads up the field in Catherine Debrunner, who has won the last two TCS London Marathons.

Previous champions Manuela Schär (SUI) and Tatyana McFadden (USA) have also been confirmed for this year, alongside British talent Eden Rainbow-Cooper, who also arrives fresh from her impressive win in Boston.

🙋‍♀️ ELITE WOMEN: When the London fields were first announced, it looked like we were going to get the first clash between world champion Peres Jepchirchir, Olympic champion Sifan Hassan and 2025 London winner Tigst Assefa since the trio met at the Paris Games in 2024.

They are also the last three winners in London, but it was announced in March that Dutch star Hassan had been ruled out with an Achilles injury, and she was soon joined on the sidelines by Jepchirchir. All of which means Ethiopia’s Assefa will be the favourite to defend her title after she set a ‘women-only’ world record of 2:15:50 last year.

Her quickest marathon time of 2:11:53 from Berlin in 2023 is more than two minutes faster than the next best of Joyciline Jepkosgei of Kenya, who ran the fourth-fastest time in history to win the 2025 Valencia Marathon in 2:14:00 and triumphed in London in 2021.

🙋‍♂️ ELITE MEN: Thankfully, all the biggest star names announced earlier this year have made it to the start line as defending champion Sebastian Sawe (KEN) looks to extend his 100% win record from his three marathons to date – and is predicting a course record time, such is the calibre of the field.

Up against him are Jacob Kiplimo (UGA), last year’s runner-up, who is also the world record holder for the half-marathon and the reigning Bank of America Chicago Marathon champion.

Also confirmed are Joshua Cheptegei (UGA), the 2024 Olympic Games 10,000m champion and world record holder for both the 5,000m (12:35) and 10,000m (26:11); the 2024 Olympic marathon champion, Tamirat Tola (ETH); and Yomif Kejelcha (ETH), who will be making his marathon debut after a sparkling track career that included a silver medal in the 10,000m at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo.

✌️TWO DAYS NEXT YEAR? The public ballot is now open for next year’s London Marathon – and organisers have confirmed they are hoping it could be a two-day event in 2027. The ballot opened on Friday and will close at 16:00 UK time on Friday, 1 May.

With more than a billion applications for this year’s race, organisers have confirmed there are plans to extend the 2027 race: “Together with partners and stakeholders, London Marathon Events is exploring the possibility of the 2027 TCS London Marathon taking place across two days.

“Should permission be granted for this one‑off two‑day format, all ballot entrants would automatically be entered into the ballot for both the Saturday and Sunday events (though they would only be able to run one event), significantly increasing their chances of securing a place in the 2027 TCS London Marathon.”

Last year, the chance of a place worked out at around 2%. Ballot results for 2027 will be announced by early July.

You can find more details on the London Marathon ballot HERE.

We ran a full version of this content earlier in the year, but it is worthwhile repeating as the big day draws near, and some of our Daily Split readers might be working on their last-minute preparations ahead of tomorrow.

To get an idea of what a ‘good’ London Marathon finish time might be, we crunched the numbers from 2024 to get the average, good and exceptional finish times for amateur London Marathon runners – 2025 was too warm and the times were skewed.

Remember, what is good or average for one athlete can differ greatly from another, and we are not looking to diminish the efforts of anyone who has completed a marathon… as always, we salute you. 🫡

Good luck to everyone who is running in tomorrow’s London Marathon… we believe in you… You got this!!! 💪

Tour of the Alps: Rising Italian star Giulio Pellizzari gave himself a huge confidence boost with only two weeks till start of the Giro d'Italia when he won stage five and the GC at the Tour of the Alps on Friday.

The 22-year-old attacked on the final climb, distancing GC rivals Thymen Arensman and Egan Bernal (both Ineos Grenadiers), before descending with aplomb to the finish at Bolzano, northern Italy.

Bernal out-sprinted defending champion Michael Storer (Tudor Pro Cycling) and Arensman, with the Ineos pair finishing second and third on GC.

The five-stage race started in Innsbruck, Austria, on Monday and finished in Bolzano, Italy, yesterday. On Wednesday, British star Tom Pidcock sprinted to a stage three victory, less than a month after crashing into a ravine.

For full reports on the Tour of the Alps, read Cycling Weekly, HERE.

Sam Long asks the question whether he was right to push on and finish last week’s IRONMAN Texas, or whether he would have been better off recording a DNF.

With no chance of winning the big Pro Series points on offer, he could have stopped, kept his energy in reserve, and looked to race another day… but he didn’t.

As he put it: “Midway through the second loop of the run, I started thinking about dropping out. Not because I couldn’t finish, but because in the current points system, there are situations where that can actually be the smarter move.

“For the pro series now: I would either need to add another pro series Ironman, making it 5 in a calendar year or accept that I am most likely out of the running for it. By finishing, I did a big effort and left with nothing to provide for my family.

“That’s a strange place to be as a competitor. I was even talking it through with an age grouper next to me. We were literally debating strategy mid-race.

“Do you finish and take the hit? Or do you pull the plug and reset for the next one?”

With his family there watching in Texas, there was no way that Long could let them down, and he battled through to the end, finishing 15th and taking the warm applause as he crossed the line.

What would you have done?

Endurance athletes can breathe a sigh of relief this week after the Dragon’s Back Race and Northern Traverse were saved in a deal which saw Ultra X take on the responsibility for hosting these two much-loved events.

There had been concerns regarding their future when organisers Ourea Events went into administration last month; however, this move by Ultra X – a company experienced in hosting major long-distance challenge events – has saved them both, while also asking former Ourea personnel Greg Mickelborough and Shane Ohly to remain involved.

However, there was no such good news for fans of the Cape Wrath Trail, which is not part of the Ultra X rescue package, and which now seems unlikely to take place this year, having been cancelled when Ourea went out of business.

Together, we go the distance. — @247_endurance 🏃‍♂️🚴‍♀️🏊‍♂️