If you’ve run a marathon, you know how fun it is to celebrate Medal Monday—the unofficial runner’s holiday that allows you to wear your finisher’s medal the day after you finish a race just so you can embellish your 26.2-mile success with everyone you come across.
And, of course, it’s also fun to wear around town because you can get a lot of discounts and free stuff from participating restaurants, pubs, and shops in the race’s host city.
David Hellard didn’t run this year’s London Marathon, but he went on an extreme quest for post-race freebies on April 28, the day after his wife, Claire Biggs, ran the course in 3:35:09. In a challenge to find out how many freebies he could collect, the 46-year-old British runner took Biggs’ finisher medal and ran nearly a full marathon on his own, covering 25.8 miles in 6 hours, 42 minutes while consuming 20 drinks (mostly beers and aperols), six pizzas, a cookie, a burger, a pudding cup, and a greek salad.
He also brought home three bath bombs for Biggs after stopping at three different Lush shops on his freebie jaunt, as well as his seventh and final pizza of the day. All told, he estimates he received about $285 worth of food, drink, and schwag with the medal. (Here’s a partial list of freebies available around London in the days after the marathon.)
“I loved the idea of going all-out for the freebies for a few years, but I’ve always been too busy with work to commit to it,” said Hellard, the co-host of the Bad Boy Running podcast and founder of Caffeine Bullet energy chews. “When I saw how good the list was this year, I had to give it a try. I didn’t realize how hard it is to eat fresh pizzas at speed. They’re like lava, and I needed the drinks to dip the crust. I even made an error on my first pizza of ordering my favorite kind, layered with blue cheese and potatoes. It was lightweight margarita pizzas after that.”
Hellard has run the London Marathon a dozen times since he first did it as a 19-year-old in 1997 and also participated several times as a pacer. He once ran the race dressed as the “world’s fastest fairy” and another time took the lead for 400 meters as a part of a challenge to raise money for Sierra Leone street children.
“I love the race, nothing can beat running down the streets you know among the community you run with,” he said. “My wife wants us to run it together as a joint costume so any ideas are welcome.”
Hellard is an accomplished runner who owns a 2:44:54 marathon personal best from the 2012 Milan Marathon, although he admits he’s spent the past 10 years focusing on ultrarunning on the trails and never trained for a new road marathon PB. He’s run numerous races from 50K to 250K, including the Comrades Marathon in South Africa, Marathon des Sables in Morocco, and the Ultra Tour of Edinburgh.
“I wish I’d have raced a marathon when I was ultra-fit though,” he said. “I would have loved to have run one averaging sub 6-minute miles, which may have been possible.”
In addition to authentic racing, Hellard has also competed for England in the Beer Mile World Classic in 2016 and has also organized the Great British Beerathon a five-mile race where four pints and four bits of classic British food are consumed. He also ran a solo beer mile on top of 14,115-foot summit of Pikes Peak in Colorado in 2023.
He says if he had turned his post-London Marathon freebies run into an ultra, he could have gobbled up a lot more.
“This was just the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “I could have had 40 pizza alone, but I ran out of time, and space in my belly. I also knew the video would look much better if you could see that I’d drunk everything, so I tried to down every drink in one go. I was so full of gas I felt like I was pregnant for seven hours.”
Hellard said he spoke to a lot of the store, restaurant and pub managers about the promotion and they were universally positive about how it benefited their businesses. Many runners bring friends and family and spend far more than the key offer, so the net-net of extra exposure and more customers is a win-win, Hellard said.
“But more than that it’s joyous,” he said. “Wearing the medal as you eat and drink led to conversations between tables and customers. In Covent Garden, the Franco Manca pizzeria had at least six tables of marathon runners having dinner, and each new entrant gave a knowing nod to the others. Everyone knows about the marathon and respects it as an achievement and for a day, the sun seemed to shine wherever I went.”
Brian Metzler is a Boulder, Colorado, writer and editor whose work has appeared in Runner’s World, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Outside, Trail Runner, The Chicago Tribune, and Red Bulletin. He’s a former walk-on college middle-distance runner who has transitioned to trail running and pack burro racing in Colorado.
