Believe it or not, that weird kilometer count comes from the 1908 London Olympics. The race was originally planned to be 26 miles, but the royal family wanted the start to be at Windsor Castle’s lawn and the finish line right in front of the royal box at the Olympic Stadium.
Crunch those measurements, and you get 26 miles and 385 yards—which translates to our 42.195 km. And it stuck. Every official marathon since has followed that same quirky route length.
So when you watch the London Marathon, you’re literally retracing a piece of Olympic history. Pretty cool, huh?
Let’s make that distance feel real—with some fun comparisons.
Think about it: 42.195 km is the same as running from central London all the way to the M25 motorway loop. Or imagine jogging a full lap around the M25 orbital road—that’s about 188 km, so you’d need to do this route more than four times!
Here’s another mind-bender: if you laid out 367,500 bananas end-to-end, you’d get the marathon distance. That’s a lot of potassium. Or think of it as 1,050 laps around a standard 400-meter track. After just 10 laps, your legs are already asking, “Why?”
London Marathon 2026 Route – London Marathon – UPFV
And here’s a fun one for the city-lovers: you could walk from Buckingham Palace to Big Ben about 200 times to equal the marathon. But you’d probably be banned from the royal parks after the first 50.
