“My arms and shoulders ache more than my legs.”

That’s not something that too many of the 40,000 runners who took part in the London Marathon will be saying today, but those are the words of Fiona Carter who completed yesterday’s iconic race in a hugely respectable three hours, 52 seconds.

And the reason that her arms and shoulders ache so much is quite simple because Fiona, who was competing in the 50-54 age category, was running dressed as a cheerleader, complete with pom-poms.

“I had my name on my shirt and every time the crowd shouted ‘Fiona’ I’d raise my arms to acknowledge them,” she explained. “The crowd were absolutely amazing, everyone was shouting my name so I was raising my arms a lot!

“The pom-poms aren’t heavy but you imagine going for a half-hour walk and punching the air all the time, it’s hard work.”

But all that hard work was certainly worthwhile for Fiona and her supporters because she raised £3,000 for her Gloucestershire-based sporting charity CASS & Friends, a charity that has done so much good work over the past few years.

Fiona had originally targeted a time of two hours, 55 for this year’s London but after getting Covid in June she had to reassess.

She discovered that the best ever time for running 26.2 miles dressed as a cheerleader was three hours, 27 and correctly thought that was “very achievable”.

“Unofficially, I’m a world champion,” she laughed.

And she did it in style too because her finishing time was only three minutes slower than her PB for the distance.

“I hadn’t planned to run that quickly,” she said. “I was looking at a time of 3.15 but I got carried along by the crowd. I’d planned to do it as a training run, I just ran and really enjoyed it, the support was insane.

“I was on target for a sub three hours but you forget you run a little bit farther in the London Marathon because you are running around so many people. I actually ran 42.6 kilometres instead of 42.2 but that’s absolutely fine.”

Fiona will have her running shoes on again soon because she is competing in the Bath Half Marathon a week on Sunday, before heading over to Spain to take part in the Valencia Marathon.

That’s on Sunday 4^th December and it’s a big race for her because she is targeting a time of two hours 55, which is two minutes quicker than her best over the distance.