Marathon training, nutrition and recovery: London Marathon finisher Ricki Stone on what 26.2 actually takes
Four-time London Marathon finisher Ricki Stone walks Anna and Charlotte through the year of training, the food that fuels it, the moment you hit the wall at 30k, and the bit nobody warns you about: what you feel like the week after.
By Anna & Charlotte · MNU-Certified Nutritionists · Level 3 Personal Trainers
Published 6 May 2026 · Updated 28 May 2026
TL;DR
Four-time London Marathon finisher Ricki Stone joins Anna and Charlotte to talk through what 26.2 miles really takes. She started on Couch to 5K eight years ago. Now she runs four times a week, has both a running coach and a sports dietitian, and crosses the finish line in around four and a half hours. She walks through the year of training, the food that fuels it (yes, including carbohydrates, no, you can't be afraid of bread), the gel-every-six-kilometres pacing strategy, hitting the wall at 30k, and the bit nobody warns you about: the weird flatness in the week after. The takeaway for non-runners: 'the food has to match the sport.' If you want to take up running, start with Couch to 5K, repeat weeks if you need to, and don't compare yourself to anyone else's pace.
Key takeaways
- Start with Couch to 5K, repeat weeks if you need to. You don't have to jump straight to week 2
- A marathon training block is roughly 14 weeks, starting from a 20k baseline. Four runs a week, long run Sunday, tempo, recovery, and shorter run midweek
- Carbohydrates are not the enemy. Runners need them. The night before a long run, eat rice or pasta or potatoes, feeling slightly bloated is glycogen storage, not fat gain
- On marathon day Ricki took a gel every 6km, started before she 'needed' it, and ran with electrolytes for the first time this year
- Running training fits into real life, Ricki ran at 6:15am most mornings, came home, then started her day
- You will hit the wall around 30k. The crowd, your charity, naming people you're running for, they're what get you across the line
- Recovery week feels strange. The week after is a flatness nobody warns you about, go for walks, eat well, sleep, give your body what it needs
Anna and Charlotte have never run a marathon. They've both thought about it. Charlotte's been chased away by hip and back pain every time she's tried to build up.
So when their friend Ricki Stone, four-time London Marathon finisher, came in fresh off the 2026 race, they sat her down and asked the questions every would-be marathon runner actually wants answered.
This is the episode.
How did Ricki Stone go from never running to four marathons?
Eight years ago, Ricki was working out with a personal trainer who asked her what was on her bucket list.
The first two things that popped into my mind were: I want to do The Money Or The Box [the Israeli quiz show] and I want to run a marathon.
He laughed, told her he could help with one of those, and pointed her at Couch to 5K.
That was the start of the whole thing. Couch to 5K. Then 10K. Then a half marathon in Las Vegas for a children's charity. Then her first full London Marathon, a run-walk strategy that got her across the line in 5:15.
Today she's a four-time London Marathon finisher. Her PB sits at 4:33. Her training looks completely different. And she's about to move to Israel, where she's already found running clubs to join.
The point of the backstory: she didn't start as a runner. She started as someone who'd never run.
How long does it take to train for a marathon?
Ricki's structured marathon block is 14 weeks, starting from a 20k baseline.
That means you need to be running 20k comfortably before you start a marathon block. Getting to that 20k baseline from zero, if you've never run before, is the work of about a year on its own. So full beginner to marathon-ready is roughly 12 to 18 months.
Within the 14-week marathon block, the week looks roughly like this:
Four runs a week. Plus strength training. Plus the walking, the stretching, the kit faff. Anna calls it a full-time job. Ricki doesn't disagree.
What does marathon training fit into in real life?
The morning. Always the morning.
I would wake up most mornings at quarter to six, I'd be out the door at six fifteen. Really dark, in the freezing cold, in the rain, except for snow, pretty much any condition.
Why the morning? Two reasons. Energy is better. And marathon day starts in the morning, same routine, same breakfast, same body.
She joined a running club too, Tracksmith, that meets every Sunday in central London for the long run. Different pace groups. Different routes each week. Sometimes Victoria Park. Sometimes Battersea. Once a hilly run from Tracksmith to Kenwood and back through Hampstead Heath, which Ricki remembers as the muddiest run of her life.
It's amazing because how often in life do we have to put ourselves out of our comfort zone? Into town, people you don't know, running distances you might not know before. They've really become my friends.
This matters more than it sounds. The accountability of a Sunday running club is what gets you out the door at 6am in February when you'd much rather not.
What do you eat when you're training for a marathon?
A lot. And specifically, a lot of carbohydrates.
Ricki worked with a sports dietitian alongside her running coach. She sent her weekly running plan in; he told her what to eat around each session. Bread before runs. Porridge oats. Bagels. Rice. Potatoes. Pasta.
People are scared to have bread, but when you're training he was very adamant that people who train and don't eat appropriately are very prone to injuries.
The fear of carbohydrates is one of the things Anna and Charlotte spend their working week pulling apart. The confusion comes from lumping bread and pasta in with fast food, sweets and chocolate. They're not the same thing. A wholegrain bagel and a doughnut are not the same nutritional event.
Ricki's two-day pre-marathon nutrition looked like this:
The dietitian wanted her on two and a half bagels for Friday lunch alone. She managed one. The point isn't that you have to eat like an athlete to run, it's that the food has to match the sport, and the sport in this case is 42.2km on Sunday morning.
If you want a lower-stakes example of food matching sport, our nutrition guide for women over 40 walks through what protein, carbohydrates and fats actually do in the body day to day.
What's the best pre-run breakfast?
Whatever you've trained your stomach on.
For Ricki, that's overnight oats and a banana. Eaten an hour before the start. Then a second smaller breakfast nearer the start time on marathon day, because the gap between waking and starting is so long.
If I was running more than an hour, I would have breakfast before my early morning run. If it was less than an hour I would have nothing, I would go fasted, which he encouraged sometimes.
The principle: never try a new food on race day. Whatever you've eaten before training runs, eat before the marathon.
What are energy gels and when do you take them?
Concentrated carbohydrate in a small pouch, designed to absorb fast.
Ricki took a gel every 6km on the marathon. Six gels total in a running belt. Started taking them before she felt she needed one, that's the sports-dietitian rule. By the time you feel you need a gel, your glycogen's already low and you're playing catch-up.
The course also has water stations roughly every kilometre, plus Lucozade Sport in cups. Plus people on the route handing out orange slices, Haribo and lollipops, which Ricki says: do not eat anything you haven't trained with. The day of the marathon is not the day to test what your stomach can handle.
What's it like to actually run the London Marathon?
The TV version doesn't prepare you for the noise.
Tower Bridge is the highlight. The crowds are screaming. The cheering is electric. Cutty Sark too. And there are guide runners for people who need extra support, breastfeeding stations, quiet tents for runners with anxiety, Ricki saw a woman next to her at the start line sobbing because the noise and the music and the interviews were too much. The official course has space for that too.
On the marathon course itself, you're very, very well looked after.
She set off in the 5:15-per-kilometre pace group. Started slow on purpose, the strategy is "negative splits", running the second half faster than the first. Easier said than done over 42.2km.
For the first half she ran with headphones in. By the second half she'd taken them out, because the crowd noise was better than anything in her playlist.
What does hitting 'the wall' actually feel like?
For Ricki this year, the wall hit at 30k. Roughly 10k from the end.
It's the weirdest thing because your body is just not cooperating. You're like, 'No.' You're getting tired. The people next to you call out your name and say, 'Come on, let's run them together.'
The technical reason: glycogen stores start running out. The mental reason: 30k is far enough that your body knows it's not nearly done, and far enough that your mind is starting to do the maths on the remaining 12k and finding it unacceptable.
Strategies that worked for Ricki:
She crossed the line in around four and a half hours. Met the medical team. Got the medal. Met her family. Then sobbed, partly the achievement, partly the months of 6am alarms catching up with her all at once.
What do you eat after a marathon?
Nothing, for ages, surprisingly.
I wanted salty foods as soon as I finished. My parents had salty crackers at the finish line. I was sort of like, now I'm not feeling it. I'm not hungry.
The combination of gels, Lucozade Sport and adrenaline shuts down hunger for hours. Ricki couldn't eat until she got home. Then it was a coffee and chocolate-covered something, followed by a barbecue. She woke up genuinely starving at 2am.
Recovery week looks like this:
The flatness is the part nobody warns you about. The training is so all-consuming that the absence of it leaves a hole. Ricki's solution this time round: moving to Israel and starting all over again.
What about strength training? Do runners need it?
Yes, and this is where the conversation pivots back to Anna and Charlotte's wheelhouse.
Running isn't just legs. It's neck, arms, core, everything. Without strength work in the gym alongside the runs, you're asking the running to build all your supporting muscles too, and it can't. Result: injury.
For women in midlife who aren't running marathons, the case is even stronger, strength training in your 40s and 50s is one of the single most evidence-backed things you can do for body composition, bone density and longevity. Our aceSTRONG programme and our women 40+ body transformation guide both lean heavily into this.
I've never run before. Where do I start?
Couch to 5K. Always.
Try it. A lot of people will tell me, 'How do you run? I can't run down the road.' But try Couch to 5K. My other thing, you can always repeat a week. It doesn't mean you have to jump into two.
Ricki used to repeat week one twice, then week two twice, then move to three. That's allowed. The plan isn't sacred. Your body decides when it's ready for the next jump in volume, not the calendar.
What's Ricki's one non-negotiable?
Every guest on aceCHATS gets the same closing question: what's the one thing in your health and wellness routine you won't compromise on?
For Ricki, two things:
That second one is the thread that runs through every conversation Anna and Charlotte have with their clients. The food has to match the goal. There's no version of this work where you eat like you're trying to lose weight while training for an endurance event. The bodies don't allow it.
The bottom line
You don't have to run a marathon. Most women won't, and don't need to.
But the principles Ricki ran through, start small, follow a structured plan, fuel properly, name the people who get you across the line, repeat weeks when your body needs more time, they're the same principles that work for the women Anna and Charlotte coach who want to lose 10kg, get stronger through perimenopause, or finally stop yo-yoing through diets.
If you want a structured place to do that work that isn't a marathon, our aceTRANSFORM programme is built on the same principles. So is aceSTRONG for women specifically focused on strength and longevity.
Or join the free Skool community and have a look around first. You don't have to commit to anything to walk in.
Frequently asked
How long does it take to train for a marathon?
Ricki recommends 14 weeks of structured training from a 20k baseline. So you need to be running 20k comfortably before you start a marathon block. From total beginner to marathon-ready is closer to 12 to 18 months: Couch to 5K, then 10K, then half marathon, then marathon. Trying to compress that timeline is what leads to injury and the kind of marathon day where you're hoping for the best rather than trained for it.
What should I eat the day before a long run or marathon?
Carbohydrates, eaten across the day. Porridge oats. Bagels. Rice. Pasta. Potatoes. Bread. Ricki's sports dietitian wanted her on roughly 2.5 bagels for Friday lunch the day before the marathon, and she could barely finish. Carbs are stored as glycogen, which is the fuel your body burns during the run. You can carry around 4kg of glycogen. You'll feel slightly bloated the day after carb-loading because glycogen binds water in the body. That's not weight gain, it's fuel.
How do you avoid 'hitting the wall' in a marathon?
You don't avoid it, you prepare for it. The wall typically hits around 30 to 32k when glycogen stores start running out. The strategies that work: take energy gels every 6km starting before you feel you need them, not after. Add electrolytes. Train your stomach to tolerate the gels during long training runs, never try a new gel on race day. And mentally, name the people you're running for in advance. When you're at 32k and your body is refusing to cooperate, those names are what carry you to the finish line.
Can I really start running if I've never done it before?
Yes. Couch to 5K is the universal starting point. Ricki, who's now run four London Marathons, started there eight years ago having never run before. The key is to repeat weeks if you need to, you don't have to jump straight from week 1 to week 2. Build your base slowly. Believe you can. Don't compare your pace to anyone else's. A four-and-a-half hour marathon for one person is a personal best; for another it's slow. Aim for whatever's right for you.
