Race day didn’t go as planned for Kaiser Chiefs frontman and singer Ricky Wilson. At mile 24 of the London Marathon on April 23, the indie-pop singer collapsed and “woke up in an ambulance,” he told listeners of Virgin Radio UK.
“I dropped out. I fell over, and I woke up in an ambulance. Mile 24 of the London Marathon. I woke up in an ambulance with TV news host Sophie Raworth, she was having a suppository.” As a wise man once sang, “There’s good days and bad days.” And while this certainly wasn’t a great one, Wilson, who, ahem, never misses a beat, managed to finish the race five days later.
“I found the place I fell over because it was in a tunnel near the Mermaid Theatre. I went back there five days later, and there was a mark on the wall where I’d slumped against it, and then I ran the last two miles, so I did a personal best of five days, four hours and 15 minutes,” he told his co-hosts, Sinead Garvan and Vassos Alexander.
While he wouldn’t expand upon his interaction with Raworth, he did share that she later contacted him in the hopes of including his story in a future book.
Check out the segment from the radio show below.
Kells McPhillips is a health and wellness journalist living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Runner's World, The New York Times, Well+Good, Fortune, Shape, and others.
