Go, Doug, go! First ever Scar Free representative to run London Marathon 2025 

On Sunday 27 April 2025, Doug Meikle will run the London Marathon for the Scar Free Foundation and The ME Association, with donations split across the two charities.

We feel absolutely honoured that Doug has chosen to support us – and we wish him the best of luck!

Doug will be our first ever representative at the London Marathon, so we spoke to this trailblazing runner about the big day, his motivations, and two very important carbs: porridge and pizza.

Support Doug via JustGiving

In 2017, Doug watched Laura (his now-wife) run the London Marathon. “Have you been to watch? It is literally the best day out ever. It’s like the best of people”, he says enthusiastically.

Doug grew up with running in the blood: playing hockey, playing tennis, then gravitating towards trail and long-distance.

The following year, Doug decided he’d like a turn pounding the +26 miles of tarmac between Greenwich and The Mall. But Doug’s first London Marathon didn’t exactly go to plan.

“I had the displeasure of running in 2018. It was a stupidly hot year”, he laughs. No wonder it felt stupidly hot: it was in fact the hottest London Marathon on record.

“I rocked up on the day and it was about 25 degrees Celsius. Bear in mind, I live in Scotland, and we’d just had the Beast from the East: I’d been training in the snow, not double-digit temperatures”.

On top of this, Doug only had about “two or three gels” on him for race-day energy. “Turns out you’re actually meant to have a gel every half an hour. I didn’t even have a proper watch first time round, so I’ve learned a lot in terms of looking after myself”.

He still “enjoyed about three quarters of the race”, before asking again “have you ever been? It’s brilliant”. Despite the conditions and lack of gel, something about the London Marathon clearly got under Doug’s skin that day.

And last June, his 2025 marathon ballot came through. How did getting a marathon place make Doug feel? “It means a lot to me – and to my best mate Ed as well”.

Doug continues, “I said to Ed, what charity would mean the most for you to support? So, he said, do you know the Scar Free Foundation?”

“I mean, he’s so tall, he’s got to stretch his legs somehow”, jokes Ed when we talk about Doug’s running.

Doug and Ed have been best friends since the early 2000s. Initially childhood rivals on the playing field, they found themselves at the same school in Perthshire – “and, you know, he’s not unforgettable at his six-foot-something-stupid at age 12”, says Ed.

While in the Army in his mid-twenties, Ed was diagnosed with Dercum’s Disease, a ‘rare disorder characterised by multiple, painful growths of fatty tissue’. The tissue grows to press on nerves, muscles and tendons, causing immense pain and restriction in movement, usually remedied through surgery.

“It’s in the subcutaneous layer of your skin”, Ed explains, “so where your fat is normally is stored. It’s a bit like having a pebble in your shoe. Sometimes the pebble can be really small, but in a really annoying area, like right under your heel. And sometimes it can be a really fat pebble, it’s not as annoying, but it will start to press on other stuff”.

Ed’s undergone multiple, major surgeries to remove the lumps – up to 20 in one go – meaning “about 100 new sets of stitches a time. Then your body’s not trying to make one scar but make 20 scars all over you”.

“Being a fit young man, suddenly coming down with a condition to do with fat storage issues is quite unusual”. Ed felt he went from “a career of being fit and healthy, to, yeah, I can’t do that anymore. What am I going to do next?”.

Ed estimates he has over 100 areas of scar tissue, “varying from an inch or two and very neat, to large and very mucky where they’ve split open during healing”.

As soon as Doug learned he’d be running, he was clear on the causes he’d run for. “When I got a place in the marathon, I always knew that I wanted to run for Mum, supporting The ME Association, and for Ed, supporting Scar Free.

Hopefully when I’m down in the ditches, at whatever mile, and I happen to have a wobble, I’ll think of that. That’s why we do these things, isn’t it?”

“Training with a one-year-old is probably the biggest challenge of the lot” but when he got the ballot through Doug thought, “I can’t not run”.

But between February and March, Doug found himself in exactly that position. “Daisy brought back everything and anything from nursery, so all of us were wiped out with an executive string of everything”.

Ed remembers it clearly: “We have a group text, and we’re like, how’s everyone? How’s life? And Doug would reply I’m still sick”.

It was Doug’s wife, Laura, who got him through: “Laura has been incredibly supportive throughout the training, and I couldn’t have managed without her. She went back to work in January, our daughter Daisy also started nursery and then the icing on the cake was me disappearing for long runs every weekend!”.

After recovering and getting back into training, everything’s been “really good again” for Doug. The next challenge is how to plan the race.

Along with meticulous preparation, Doug has a trick up his sleeveless running vest: “I’ve been running similar routes with the intention it’s quite boring. When I turn up to London, I’m going to be like, wow, seeing all these things when the adrenaline kicks in. We’ll see, but it’s part of the plan!”.

Recently, Doug’s replaced his most-played podcasts with “the complete opposite. I like to not listen to anything. It’s something to do with the stillness, my mind just gets to chill out”. He pauses. “It’s almost like a weird meditation…if that doesn’t sound too sadistic”.

Even if running long distances in silence isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, there’s a part of Doug’s training most of us could probably get on board with: carbing up, one of Doug’s “favourite activities”.

“I’ve done all my long runs now and we’re into the best bit, which is tapering and eating”. Doug rightly points out that it’s “easy to eat porridge, especially in Scotland in the winter” during training, and when he finishes the marathon, he’ll be heading straight to Pizza Pilgrims with his family and friends: “I’ve got a good crew coming down”.

That crew includes Ed, who’s now based in South London. “Pizza’s the plan”, says Ed, “but that depends. Doug will be starving but probably hobbling by then”.

One unknown about Doug’s race day remains: whether he’ll make an appearance on live TV.

“I’ve always wondered whether there’s going to be a time I can jump in front of a TV camera on London Bridge, because they just grab randomers and ask for their story. But the competitive side of my brain’s like, ‘oh, it’s five minutes of my time’, so…I’m annoyingly competitive”, Doug smiles.

Support Doug via JustGiving

We’ll be bringing you all the latest on Doug’s marathon through our newsletter, site, socials – and possibly via the BBC (if Doug decides to stop for the cameras).