What’s this all about then?

OK, so I’ve made a blog and boldly declared that it will be a chronicle, of sorts, of my attempt to qualify for the UK championship start at the London Marathon by running 26.2 miles in a time quicker than two hours and forty-five minutes. I suppose the next thing is to explain what I’m going to try and do for that to happen.

The important thing to note is that I’m not certain I can run a marathon in a sub-2:45’ time. That’s not a caveat, or an excuse in the event of failure. Rather, I’m mentioning it to establish some context.

Until the Seville Marathon in February 2015 I thought breaking three hours would be the absolute limit of my running potential. It was a goal that seemed so unlikely when I first started running, that it meant no matter what I achieved (a sub-4, sub-3:30’, an ultra, etc), I would always have the sub-3 goal in the background. Then I did it, and the goal was gone. I needed a new ultimate goal and sub-2:45’ is it.

Yes, there are plenty of runners who can run quicker than that and it isn’t a fast time in the global, grand scheme of things. But I’m a ‘normal’ recreational runner, who grew up dreading school cross country races, got into running in my twenties to try and get fit, and then got hooked. For me, like so many others, sub-2:45’ is a terrifying (yet such an exciting) prospect.

If everything goes to plan, I’m going to have a crack at it at the 2017 London Marathon, because my Seville time will still get me a Good For Age entry that year, but not the next. I might succeed in breaking 2:45’, but I probably won’t. Whatever the result, I’ll know what I need to work on and can adapt my training accordingly ahead of the next attempt.

My current plan for the race is to run at sub-2:45’ pace for as long as I can and see how long I can hang on for. If I get to 3, 13, or 23 miles, for example, I’ll know exactly how much improvement is required. With this approach — where there are positives to be gained from not succeeding — I can’t fail!

This is a departure from my old approach of playing it safe to try and eke out a PB, but is a mind-set switch that I have been able to make because I broke the three hour barrier: I’ve already achieved everything I wanted to achieve, so now I can marathons however I want. To butcher a concept from Adharanand Finn’s ‘The Way of the Runner’, I want to try and shift from the European and Japanese ‘accountant’ approach to racing, towards the fearless Kenyan style of just going for it (within reason, of course).

Unfortunately, right now, I’m not quick enough. After Seville I broke my shoulder, didn’t run for months, lost my motivation, and lost fitness as a result. So before I even think about running 26.2 consecutive 6’17” miles, I need to get quicker. I spent the summer trying to lower my 5k time, and was reasonably successful, but still have a fair way to go.

I’ll go into the detail of my training plan in another post. Until then, I hope you (whoever you may be) find this as useful and interesting to read as I’m hoping it will be for me to write!

More soon, I promise.