Record numbers to run Marathon

When registration desks at the London Marathon Expo at ExCeL London closed at 17:00 today, a total of 38,262 accepted applicants for places had picked up their running numbers and Ipico Sports Timing tags.

Around 37,800 are predicted to start today, making the 2015 London Marathon the biggest in the event’s 35-year history.

The previous record was set in 2012 when 37,227 started and 36,705 finished the race.

The London Marathon’s three inaugural champions, Dick Beardsley, Inge Simonsen and Joyce Smith, will set the elite wheelchair racers on their way from Blackheath at 09:00, to be followed five minutes later by nearly 100 of the world’s top para-athletes competing for their countries in the other six events of the IPC Athletics Marathon World Championships.

The best women marathon runners in the world will set off in pursuit of the most prestigious big city title at 09:20, while an elite men's field packed with champions and record-breakers will begin the 26.2-mile journey from south east London to Westminster at 10:10.

Among those competing for the prized London Marathon titles will be 20 London 2012 Olympics and Paralympic athletics medallists, including four London 2012 marathon champions, and many of the quickest marathon runners ever to complete the gruelling classic distance.

The elites will be followed by thousands of club athletes, fun runners, charity fundraisers, celebrities, politicians and fancy dress costume wearers. Their section of the race will be started by Beardsley and Simonsen, who will reproduce their famous #handinhand gesture from 1981 as they plunge the big red button.

In among the masses will be Paula Radcliffe, the three-times winner and women’s world record holder, who bids farewell to her career as a professional athlete with one last 26.2-mile outing on the streets where she made her name more than a decade ago.

Reigning champions Wilson Kipsang and Edna Kiplagat will be among the favourites as they defend their London Marathon crowns against two of the toughest fields in history.

Chief among those challenging Kipsang as he bids for a London hat-trick will be fellow Kenyan Dennis Kimetto, who makes his London debut seven months after taking the world record below the 2:03 barrier.

The principal pair will be joined by the third quickest man in history Emmanuel Mutai; Eliud Kipchoge, the Chicago and Tokyo Marathon champion; and Geoffrey Mutai, the two-times New York champion who is yet to find his form in London, not forgetting last year’s runner-up, Stanley Biwott, who returns to the London Marathon seeking to go one better in 2015.

Those attempting to wrest the women's title from the two-times world champion include the flame-haired Florence Kiplagat, denied victory by just three seconds 12 months ago; Mary Keitany, the New York champion and twice a London winner in the past; and Priscah Jeptoo, a world and Olympic silver medallist who topped the London podium in 2013.

Britain's Paralympic champion David Weir is gunning for a record seventh London title in a tough men's wheelchair contest against multiple world champion Marcel Hug, the Swiss superstar who beat him last year, while the all-conquering American Tatyana McFadden defends the women's wheelchair crown against Britain's Shelly Woods, Paralympic champion Shirley Reilly and world champion Manuela Schär.

Two world record holders are expected to lead the charge in the IPC World Championships as El Amin Chentouf of Morocco and Spain’s Maria Paredes Rodriguez go for gold in contests for visually impaired athletes, while Israel’s Eitan Hermon targets a world record for single leg amputees.

Radcliffe won't be the only athlete to attract domestic interest as four Britons run with the elites – Scott Overall in the men’s race, Sonia Samuels, Emma Stepto and Rebecca Robinson in the women’s – all chasing places in Britain’s team for this summer’s IAAF World Championships in Beijing.

Behind them some 37,000 club runners, joggers, Guinness World Record chasers and charity fundraisers will pound the capital's streets for their own personal targets, whether measured in pounds raised, or hours, minutes and seconds on the clock.

Alongside Gemma ‘Mona Lisa’ Kirkham and the Toy Story trio will be former footballer Lee Hendrie, Call the Midwife actress Helen George, model Christy Turlington Burns and Formula 1’s Jenson Button.

However fast they run, the day is guaranteed to hold special meaning for Laura Harvey and Paul Elliott, who will marry at St Katharine Docks half way round the course, and it will be a poignant one for Jane Sutton as she runs in memory of her son Stephen, the teenaged Facebook phenomenon who passed away last year.

First under the famous finish gantry in The Mall will be the best young runners and wheelchair racers in the country competing for honours in the Virgin Money Giving Mini London Marathon which will be started at 08:40 by Spurs and England footballer Andros Townsend.