By running the London Marathon with a lung condition, I want to prove that you can do anything

I’m Cori, I'm 33 and I live in Bracknell with my husband and my dog. When I'm not working or currently running, I like to play netball and I also perform in a local musical theatre group.  

I've entered the ballot for the London Marathon for the past five or six years but I’ve never got a place. This year, within the same week as finding out I was unsuccessful in the ballot, I had my asthma nurse appointment. My nurse prescribed me a new inhaler and showed me the Asthma + Lung UK website to teach me how to use this new inhaler.  

I also met with my sister that week, who told me if I'm ever going to do the London Marathon, I might as well do it this year, because I'm never going to be as young or as fit as I currently am – so I should just go for it! It all kind of fell into place, and I decided to apply to run with Asthma + Lung UK – and here we are!  

I started regularly running in April 2024 

My parents take part in a parkrun every week and one day they joked, “Oh, we’ll see you on Saturday at the parkrun.” So I followed through on the joke and turned up to their local parkrun, took a photo of me with the parkrun sign and said, “Where are you?”. Now I'm running the London Marathon – so the joke has definitely got a bit out of hand! 

I have exercise-induced asthma  

When I was young, I played a lot of sports like netball and hockey. I had exercise-induced asthma, but as a teenager, it didn’t really affect me too much.  

About seven years ago, I started playing netball again. Netball is a winter sport and it gets really cold when you’re playing – and the cold really gets to my chest. One night, I came home from a match and felt really wheezy and was really struggling. It turned out I was having an asthma attack, but it just didn’t register in my brain because my asthma hadn’t affected me for over 10 years.  

That was a real wake up call. I went to the doctor the next morning and I got my inhaler and my asthma action plan sorted, and I haven’t looked back. I use my inhaler every morning and I’m so much better with it now 

My training’s actually been really fun!  

I started a TikTok account when I started my London Marathon training plan and I’ve been posting on there for about eight months to keep me accountable and to keep me running. I hadn’t done a running race before I started training for the London Marathon and now I’ve taken part in six races – and got six medals!  

The last few weeks have been tough because they’ve been the 30km plus runs, which mentally have been very challenging. But the mental side of running a marathon is half the battle.  

I’m slightly terrified to run the London Marathon, but I’m also so excited. By running the London Marathon with a lung condition, I want to prove that you can do anything.