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This week marked a significant moment for runners up and down the country with aspirations of taking part in the UK’s biggest and best-known long distance event: London Marathon ballot decision time.

Last year, I was extremely fortunate to win a place in the event by way of the spirit-crushing lottery that is the ballot.

Every year, thousands of people earn their opportunity to take to the Capital’s streets by qualifying or raising the necessary cash to run on behalf of a charity.

For everyone else, you stick your name in a hat and hope for the best.

In the past, the London Marathon company used to operate a system whereby anyone who was unsuccessful in the ballot four times in a row would be guaranteed a spot at the fifth attempt. Now it’s a lot more straightforward – yes or no.

This is of course means that some people get in first time (like me last year), and others succeed twice or more consecutively – while many thousands of people enter multiple years on the bounce with no luck.

This year, I was fortunate enough (or quick enough, depending on your stance), to secure my spot for 2015 and 2016 before lunch on Sunday 13th April 2014. By this, I mean that I achieved the ‘Good For Age’ standard for my age group (male, under 40 – 3 hours and 5 minutes). I even left myself 44 seconds of breathing space. I know, always the showboat.

Never one to be out-done, I was joined in the GFA pen by my always-more-dedicated-than-me sister, Sam, who sportingly wrapped up her qualifying time at the marathon in my back yard, Milton Keynes, in May.

However, at the same event, my long-suffering Ginger companion, Sarah as she’s known, missed the cut by a matter of seconds – a result which motivated her to enter 2015’s Greater Manchester Marathon, with its notoriously fast course, in search of a qualifying time for 2016.

Imagine the conundrum now presented to Sarah when she received her very own ‘you’re in’ letter and magazine from the London Marathon company this week – the two races are separated by just one week, with the Manchester event falling first.

So where do we go from here? Focus efforts on Manchester and enjoy the day at London? Or give the big one everything and give the north a miss?

In an ideal world I’d love to do both, making Manchester my number one priority. London was an incredible experience this year and I’m immensely proud to have achieved what I did, but it’s hard to take in such a momentous occasion when you’re slogging your guts out to maintain a specific pace while avoiding the crowds, litter and other hazards.

While that’s great in theory, running marathons is not easy – I have immense respect for anyone who runs them back-to-back or with little rest in between. Six weeks after London, I ran the 26.2 again in Liverpool and that was hard enough; I felt like I needed a good three weeks to feel human again in my running after London and that gave me no time to train for Liverpool – which made the Scouse event tougher than the Capital one.

But when the two are one weekend after another, maybe that has it’s positive side – there’s no time to down tools and put your feet up, just take a couple of days off, then a couple of easy days and then back on the carbs. After all, we run 20+ mile training runs on consecutive Sundays in the build-up, so it’s not beyond the realms of physical possibility.

The answer will surely present itself in the coming days and weeks; in one way, it’s good that the two events are so close together, as there’s no need to overhaul training schedules and start or re-start.

Either way, it all begins on Boxing Day: 18 weeks before London and 17 before Manchester. That should just about be enough time…