Running a 3-hour marathon

Posted on: 2 May 2025

Manchester Marathon 2025. My first marathon in 13 years. Deferred from the previous year due to injury. Sub-3 was the public goal throughout the training block but I wasn’t convinced of how achievable this was. But seeing friends run sub-3 recently and their words of encouragement spurred me on to chase the dream.

I was surprisingly not nervous the week, or even the day before. But the night before, I couldn’t switch my subconscious off and only managed a couple of hours of sleep before. But walking to the race village on Sunday morning, the adrenaline was pumping and I felt very much alive and kicking.

After meeting up with Francis, we got our bags dropped off nice and easy, with the backdrop of Old Trafford stadium - not a bad start location. Then we waited with a healthy dose of apprehension. We were the lucky ones; it was a comfortably cool temperature at 8 in the morning. In 3 hours we’d have long been replaced in the start area with less fortunate runners setting off as late as 11.30am. The organisation of the start process was excellent.

The anticipation was palpable as we made our way down an empty dual carriageway on the way to the start line. As we waited to start, the enormity of the task ahead hung heavy over me. I’d run many races before, but I’d only lined up once to run 42.2k, and in very different circumstances with much less ambitious goals. But at that moment the unknown was exhilarating.

By 9am, with 10 minutes to go, the outer layer was well and truly off; the sun already starting to heat up the roads ahead. It was going to be warm, but it didn’t deter my spirit. The gun for our wave went off, and then followed the slight anti-climactic waiting and shuffle to cross the start line. Francis and I hadn’t given much thought to our starting position, and we soon realised we’d placed ourselves quite far back in the pack, way behind the sub-3 pacers up ahead.

The first K was surreal. This was actually happening. We hadn’t got round to having a warm up so the first K very much felt like that warm up. It was crowded and neither of us wanted to put in any surges this early. So it was mostly a case of settling in and avoiding some awkwardly-positioned curbs. I was acutely aware we were behind pace, but figured we could easily catch it back up later.

The only thing I can really recall from the first few K was wondering how I should be feeling, and trying to gauge how I was feeling. My HR was higher than I was anticipating, but I put this down to a big spike of adrenaline and didn’t overthink it. I knew the wrist HR wasn’t going to be too accurate. The perceived effort felt fine.

Francis and I chatted a fair bit, exchanging reports on how it was going. Francis had some early discomforts which unfortunately ended up plaguing him for a lot of the race. The watch was reporting slightly over pace, but I wasn’t concerned as I wanted a conservative start. The mood was high and the familiar rhythmic sound of hundreds of super shoes hitting the road was comforting.

At the dog-leg at the start of the 5th kilometre I saw just how far behind the main sub-3 pack we were. The pacers had gone off over a minute before us at the start and had pulled further away in the first few kilometres.

I manually splitted at 5k and realised we were nearly 20 seconds behind target. Not ideal, but not a big concern. The first 5k was well supported and the closest we’d get to the city centre until the end. We took on our first bit of water and I popped my first (and as it turned out, only) electrolyte tablet of the race. Already it seemed prudent to douse some of the water down my back to keep my core temperature down on what promised to be a hot day. Early on when the sun was still low, I remember strategically seeking out the shadier areas of the course to keep as cool as possible.

After seeing the first 5k split, I mentally noted the watch pace needed to be quicker. 4:15s were not going to cut the mustard with GPS drift. I was on pacing duties and I clicked into 4:13/km pace. KMs 6-10 featured some long stretches with a few gentle bumps. We got into a nice rhythm.

We were gradually, but continually overtaking people as we went. We’d started a little too far back in the crowd. There were no discernible packs going at the pace we wanted, and the 3-hour group was way up ahead, over a minute up the road. But Francis and I were happy to run our own race at this point. With the benefit of hindsight, I think hanging off the back of a large sub-3 pack would’ve helped lock into the monotony of the first half and really conserve energy.

I saw my sister Ellie and her boyfriend Josiah, my supporters for the day, just before 10k and it was a great boost.

Just before then I had the crushing realisation I’d dropped 7 of my electrolyte tablets between 5-10k. After taking the first, I’d put the rest back in my pocket and they must’ve fallen out when I took my next gel before 10k. This threw me. I’d been really hot on electrolytes in my prep, and knew I’d need it today with the temperature being high. But I had to quickly get it out of my mind and keep on track.

I don’t remember much about KMs 11-16. The scenery was indistinct and the route long and straight. I was still feeling OK in myself, but a distant demon in my head retorted “you’re 15k in, you should feel fine”. Francis was lingering behind me now, hot on my tail but not feeling great. Gels were going in as planned every 20 minutes and sitting well.

I reminded myself in the first half of a marathon to just switch my brain off. Don’t overthink; don’t overexert. Just lock in and reserve for the real test later on.

This must’ve worked to some extent, because KMs 16-18 passed without note, through the suburbs of Timperly. I knew we were approaching Altrinham - the location of the only real hill of note on the course.  Mercifully, the organisers had moved this forward on the route this year, to around halfway, at least 5km earlier than in previous years.

The 19th and 20th KMs were well supported along Stockport Road, and this was the first double-back part of the course, and an opportunity to see the faster runners moving on the other side of the road. None looking particularly fresh it has to be said. They were 3 or 4km ahead of us.

It was at this point I decided to give myself a bit of a boost and stick my music on. I had planned to keep this until I really needed it, but I thought - what the hell - let’s have a taster now. “I wanna get better” by Bleachers came on, a tune I’d used numerous times on training runs, and it instantly lifted me. The slight incline over the railway line, followed by the “infamous” Altrinham hill I gobbled up. The hill was laughably exaggerated, and summiting it lead to one of my favourite parts of the course.

We turned left down the narrow Market Street and crowds filled both sides of the road. I still had Bleachers blaring in my headphones, combined with the crowd noise and a nice downward gradient, I was flying. A big smile on my face lead to some extra encouragement from a few people in the crowd. This continued down Regent Road and onto the Stamford New Road. The atmosphere was electric. I turned the song off before the end as I knew it had done its job.

Shortly after crossing over the railway again, we hit halfway. I reigned it back in after enjoying that last kilometre and took note of a 1:30:06 halfway split. Not bad at all. But I knew I’d have to execute a negative split masterclass to hit my goal of a sub-3 marathon. The games had barely begun.

I felt positive we were “over the hump” as it were. I still felt fresh and Francis and I exchanged some words with a couple of guys ahead of us who were also aiming for as sub-3. I was riding the high of Altrinham and the boost the brief bit of music had given me. Francis was unsure if he’d be able to maintain this pace for the full distance but was still close behind me.

At 25km, we were still just holding onto around 21:20 5km splits (3-hour pace), but I knew we still had seconds to make up from slower splits earlier in the race. It was around here I started to lose Francis. He’d always been just behind me but I could see he was slipping a little further away. Taking a left onto Brooklands Road, things seemed to change for me.

This was a long, flat, tree-lined stretch around 3km in length. Something just seemed to click into place and I found a guy that was going at the pace I wanted to go at. For the first time I really concentrated on my running form. I tried to land lightly and keep my turnover high. People around me were slowing down or walking. I was overtaking people with my new silent friend, and slowly noticing the pace increasing slightly. I switched my music back on around here and tried to just space out.

A part of me knew any kind of push before 30km was madness. But at this point it felt good, it felt manageable. I was locked in. I began flirting with questions such as “when would I hit the wall?”, “what would it feel like”, but silenced that voice. Surprisingly, my legs still felt strong. I passed a B&M coming up to 30km and remembered it from Nick Bester’s POV footage of last year’s marathon.

Every time in the race that I’d surged a little, be it to get up a hill or because I was feeding off the crowd, my heart rate would spike. Each time this happened I tried consciously to calm down, breath deeply and get it back down. My heart rate was higher than I’d expect the entire race, sitting above 170 for the entire second half. Prior to this race, I’d considered low 170s to be my anaerobic threshold - the pace you can sustain for an hour-long race.

At water stations I was taking down half a bottle and dunking the rest over my neck and back. It provided a good level of relief from the sun, which was still just about tolerable for me. Running with the water bottle was awkward so I was drinking quickly and discarding. I probably should’ve been taking my time and trying to take on more. But I had the lack of electrolytes on my mind too.

I had planned to see Ellie & Josiah again at 21 miles. I did some quick mental maths to take my mind off things to work out what this was in KMs. Somewhere between 33 and 34k. That was my next mental checkpoint to get to. I was maintaining decent pace, sub-3 pace I think, as I ticked past 30, 31, 32. It was still on.

KM 33 brought us out into the open on a double-back section over the M60. I distinctly remember thinking, I shouldn’t feel strong. My legs should be dead. But they weren’t. I was overtaking people regularly now and knowing I was approaching my support crew in Stretford, I had my target.

I questioned what gesture or words I’d exchange with them as I passed. The effort was getting harder, but I felt a lot better than I feared I might at this stage. So I fed off the crowd and kept things positive. I roared past, into the right turn, and lapped up their screams of encouragement. I wanted to exude as much confidence at 21 miles into a marathon as I could. To convince me as much as anyone.

The next target now was getting to 35km in one piece. The pace was just slightly starting to drop the wrong side of sub-3 kilometre pace. I distinctly remember doing maths in my head every minute. How many KMs left, how many minutes. Simple maths feels complex at this stage into a marathon.

It was starting to hurt. The urge to stop was increasing. I was just about clinging onto pace, but it was dropping by a few seconds a kilometre. And then around KM 37 it hit me like a tonne of bricks. The wall? The legs didn’t fail, but the heart, the lungs, just wouldn’t continue going at that pace. My chest felt tight and the urge to walk was overwhelming. I’d heard the phrase “I was feeling OK until I wasn’t”, and in that moment, I understood it completely.

I’d just before skipped taking my last gel. I couldn’t stomach it. I took a breather, praying I could resume, and for the first time I felt the exertion in my legs. My quads and my hamstrings screamed. I started running again, probably 10 seconds later, knowing 4:15/km pace was no longer achievable. If I didn’t know it before, I knew sub-3 was now an unattainable goal. But in that moment I didn’t care. I just wanted to finish.

I switched my music off at this point. It was doing nothing any more. In some ways it felt good to just focus on the rawness of the situation for a moment. Just the patter of super shoes on tarmac and distant cheers of support.

I hadn’t been tracking individual KM splits at all during the race, choosing instead to manually split every 5k marker. Given I was 3km into a 5k lap split at this point, I somehow managed to hold onto 4:20/km average pace after the walk break. In reality, I knew I was running barely faster than 4:30, but I was clinging onto that average pace for as long as I could.

For the next few Ks I went to a dark place. I questioned why anyone would want to run marathons. I nearly swore off running another then and there. I saw so many walking or stopped and I wanted to join them. But damn it I could nearly taste the end. I had one of Yowana’s catchphrases in my head from the start: WE DO NOT FADE. I’d seen people’s falling-off-a-cliff marathon split graphs hundreds of times over on Strava.

I was willing this thing to end. My HR was into the 180s, a place I don’t often go to outside of 5k hard efforts, and I just wanted to see that sweet finish line. When I hit the 40k marker and the final water station, I slowed to a walk again. I consciously took on the entire bottle of water while catching my breath, then made a deal with myself I’d go as fast as I possibly could for the final 2.2km.

According to Garmin, I mostly managed to stay around 4:20/km for the majority of this final section. As I rounded the final corner onto the finishing straight, I wound it up to 4:00/km briefly. I wanted to soak it in, but even though I knew sub-3 wasn’t on, I also wanted the fastest time I could possibly get. I pretty much had tunnel vision to the end. And boy was that finish line sweet.

The feeling of euphoria engulfed me. Followed quickly by an overwhelming wave of exhaustion. I thought I might throw up, but fortunately it never came. All I wanted to do was lie, sit or even lean on something. But strategically there was very little of anything comfortable in the finish area. I exchanged a few fist bumps, downed half a litre of water, and shuffled in an onwards direction.

I recognised a face and we shared accounts of our races perched on the edge of a dumpster. I was happy going nowhere particularly fast. I then looked up to see the friendly face of Francis coming over the line. We embraced before hobbling over to bag drop together.

I had to get my shoes off pronto. They hadn’t given me too many issues during the run, but immediately after finishing, my feet were screaming. I sat down on the curb and let an audible sigh of relief to get the shoes off. A chatted to a lady next to me and a couple of others. The camaraderie at a finish line is unmatched.

I crawled through the whole finish process at a snail’s pace, still high on endorphins. Just like the start, it was very well organised. Exiting the funnel, it was like walking through arrivals at the airport as a minor celebrity. Crowds everywhere, all focussed on the exit. I saw my waving supporters and we shared a hug.

The race was run. 3:00:58. “A” goal narrowly missed, but “B” goal (3:05) smashed. I was absolutely buzzing. Until next time*.

* I can be reasonably sure now, with the benefit of recovery, there will be a next time. Another sub-3 attempt. Bring it on.

Race takeaways

• Find your pace group at the start and hang off it. I always seem to get this wrong in races. Having to pace yourself and continually weave around people, however minimally, burns unnecessary mental and physical energy.
• Have some backup electrolytes and secure them better. Taping them individually to gels may work better.
• Find your people in the second half. Go through it together. I can’t vouch for this, but I feel like this approach could be really positive mentally. Offer encouragement. Exchange mantras. It’s a lonely place when you’re in the pain cave alone.