naturalmohican
By Phillip David Penny
Achieving a life goal ten years in the making
537 words (Approximately a 3 minute read)
It has been one of my life goals to run a marathon in under four hours—today I cantered home in a time of 3:55:55.
After three ‘failed’ attempts—twice unstuck by the incredible coastline of the North Devon Marathon, and once, perhaps foolishly, taking a last-minute spot in the Brighton Marathon without training—I finally got the balance (and terrain) right on a solo effort of my own design.
With another adventure upcoming, I wanted to make the most of my fitness from last year’s marathon training before it tailed off, and clear my mind ahead of JoGLE. I designed the route to be as flat as possible (without any boring repetitive loops) yet it still turned out five times as hilly as the London Marathon, at just under 1000ft.
Running is the easy part when you flaunt the rules.
The run itself was uneventful; my pacing was steady (despite forgetting to turn on my Pace Pro plan on my new Garmin Fenix 6 Pro) and controlled using half-mile pace alerts, with only a slight tail-off during the final 8–10 miles. My pace during the latter stages was particularly surprising because it didn’t seem to marry up with how much my legs were tying up and how slow I felt; I honestly thought I had missed out by ten minutes when I finished. I achieved my target pace of nine-minute miles almost exactly, albeit with a 1:50 first half and a 2:05 second half.
Going against the mantra “nothing new on race day” I decided to do the following for the first time:
The trainers are a resounding success; I have run solely in barefoot / minimal footwear for many years now, only switching to padded zero-drop soles for the trail marathon. After a few long (10–15 mile) road runs, I was concerned with the state of the pavements after a harsh winter, so decided to get some zero-drop road shoes to reduce the chance of a stray stone bruising my heel and ending my run.
I fuelled exclusively with Tailwind for the first time—four sachets in two litres of water (1.5l bladder + 500ml collapsible bottle)—taking a sip every half-mile, as prompted by my watch alerts. The bottle was used during the last hour and contained one of the caffeine flavours. The hydration pack worked almost too well—zero sloshing, to the extent that I thought the bladder was empty. I still had one litre of fuel left in the bladder when I had finished, so perhaps I could have pushed for an even better time had I been fuelling at a faster rate (100% faster!)
It was a great feeling to see the time I achieved at the finish; I also felt remarkably pain-free. For the first time in a long time, I was able to feel unadulterated joy after achieving something. So, what happens next? Inevitably, I will feel the need to run an “official” time at an organised event, and perhaps unsurprisingly, I will consider an ultra-marathon as my next challenge.