London Marathon, live.

Three start lines, one bridge, one Mall

London starts in three places at once. Runners leave three separate start lines in Greenwich and Blackheath and only become one field just before Mile 3, in Woolwich.

From there the organiser’s own course notes read like a walk through the city: a loop around the Cutty Sark between Miles 6 and 7, a slight incline and then Tower Bridge around halfway, which the organiser calls the loudest part of the course, east along The Highway into Docklands and Canary Wharf, Rainbow Row in Limehouse just past Mile 21, back along the Victoria Embankment, a right turn by Westminster Bridge, Birdcage Walk with about a kilometre to go, and the last corner at Buckingham Palace onto The Mall. The published elevation gain is 246 feet over 42.195 km.

The 2027 race is different from every edition before it. It runs over two days, Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 April, which the organiser calls The Double, with about 100,000 runners. On Saturday the finish on The Mall closes at 17:30; on Sunday a secondary finish in Green Park stays open until 23:59:59, and runners behind eight-hour pace may meet manual bib scans. Pacers run every target from 3:00 to 7:30.

With a field that size, finding one runner in it is the hard part. On Livebib the runner shares a link to their own broadcast; family and friends open it in a browser, no account and no app, and see the position on the course line, the distance covered and a finish estimate that updates as the race goes, marked as estimated, never as measured. If the phone loses signal among the towers of Canary Wharf, the position is carried forward along the course instead of freezing. The runner decides who gets the link.