Representing England at Chester Marathon (2:32): my big six takeaways

In the previous blog I recapped the events that led to my selection for England representation in the marathon at Chester…well, that day duly arrived in early October 2024, and it was a special one that taught me loads! Here are six of my takeaways:

Unusual build and how ten mile training translated into marathon performance

Summer was a 5k block, then autumn was focused on extending speed out for my first ever ten mile race, the Great South Run. Having a marathon dumped two weeks prior to this goal race was far from ideal, but you don’t give up your first opportunity to represent your country (at your favourite distance), so it just needed to be managed carefully.

Chester was never going to be a PB attempt, though, for a few reasons:

To hold back just enough to recover for GSR.
I had done literally no runs over 30km for more than five months.
It’s not the fastest course; not crazily hilly, but certainly not flat, and about double the elevation of London, for example.
I only went into this with a partial taper, since the England ‘experience’ was far more important to me than the result.

So, I went in excited and proud, but with limited expectations, and my coach and I agreed that sub 2:35 sounded reasonable. The plan was to run sub-maximally, keep heart rate low, and just see what that spat out in terms of time. It couldn’t have gone better. I barely even looked at my pace or splits, and finished in 2:32:04, less than two minutes off my marathon PB, and to my great surprise after, as the second placed M40 runner across both the England and Wales teams.

2. Running relaxed is key to performance

Given the casual build-up, the low-key expectations, and the fact that Chester Marathon is a welcome couple of tiers below the majors on the general event stress scale, I was pretty relaxed on race morning. Knowing I was running to such a sensible heart rate (keeping it below 162, approximately 85% of my estimated max) meant there really wasn’t much that could go wrong.

So I did just that, and I also had a smile on my face for a lot of it. I had family in the crowd, my England vest on, and this was an opportunity to proudly reflect for a couple of hours on how my running journey had taken me here. I was that incredibly annoying guy thanking all the volunteers and spectators, and engaging far more than normal with my fellow runners. Absolutely buzzing, basically.

The fact that this translated into such a surprising result was also made possible by my historical endurance running (i.e. plenty of previous marathons), although while the heart and lungs were very comfortable, there was certainly a bit of neuromuscular fatigue creeping in towards the end. The body just wasn’t used to going long in this block. Fortunately, the end arrived before this became a real issue, and I was able to finish with a flourish, unknowingly pipping the second place M40 runner.

So this was a big tick for running relaxed, and indeed for slightly smaller races. Sometimes it’s good to go all in for the adrenaline of a major, but sometimes it’s just a nicer and more chilled experience for runners (and spectators) at a medium sized event like Chester.

3. The importance of pack-racing and in-race decisions

The previous paragraph describes what sounds like the most serene race of all time, and while this was mostly true, there were a couple of key points in the race that helped ensure this was the case.

The first, and most important, was after about five miles. I found myself on my own and adrift of two packs; one in front and one behind me. Given the sparsely populated course and the headwind for the first half of the race, I made a snap decision to chase down the pack ahead. They were about 20 seconds ahead at that point, but I put in 2-3 quick kms and this did the job. As soon as I got there, I was blowing for a bit, but knew it had been a good decision. There were now about 8 of us all running at a similar pace, and we took it turns to lead, but generally stayed together for about 8-10 miles, which flew by as a result of this shared load. It’s impossible to quantify the benefit of a stretch like that, but I’ll try. It felt like it was worth about 5 seconds per mile, both at the time and in hindsight.

That pack eventually started to dissipate behind just myself and a Scottish chap called Ross. We introduced ourselves to each other at this point and it transpired that he once ran the marathon for Scotland in the commonwealth games. Anyway, we kept a bit of gentle chit chat going to push each other through the hilly final few miles, and generally this helped really put the seal on what was a wholly positive race experience…but this was all down to a really good bit of decision making to chase that pack down about 20 miles earlier.

4. The pros and cons of race tourism with family

What can I say…there are definitely pros and cons to having family support at races like this, especially when one of them is an incredibly boisterous 23 month old. Here’s a quick summary off the top of my head:

Pros:

Lovely to feel truly supported and share the experience.
Exposing my son to the positivity of running as much as possible.
Nice distraction from my usual pre-race anxieties and weirdness.
That post-race beer with my wife was just perfect.

Cons:

I couldn’t just be ‘selfish’ with my usual pre-race routines; everyone needs to be factored in (although I sent everyone to Chester Zoo for the day to get a few hours of peace!)
This managing of everyone’s needs / travel plans / meal requests / spectator logistics is definitely quite tiring in itself.
Toddlers don’t suddenly become good sleepers in the build-up to a marathon. Ray refused to sleep in the travel cot I had hauled up from London on the train, so I spent my two nights before the race on some cushions on the floor. Yup, not exaggerating.

5. Fuelling for sub-maximal effort (and increased hydration)

Given that I knew I would be running this one sub-maximally, I would be using a slightly higher percentage of fat than carbs per minute than in previous marathons, so I knew I could get away with a less intense carb load. I went for 550-600g on both Friday and Saturday (approx. 9 g /kg, compared with ~11g/kg in recent marathons), and found this absurdly easy to manage; I really had to hold myself back.

I also kept my intra-marathon carb intake a little lower than usual, with approx. 210 g over 2.5 hours (84g per hour), compared to my usual ~100g/hour. As with previous races, this was a combination of a homemade carb mix drink (90g in 250ml today) and gels (3 x 40g today).

I also made more of a conscious effort to proactively drink water in the second half of the course, which is something I often neglect a bit. I don’t often feel especially thirsty and don’t like to break my momentum, but the hot and humid Big Half 2024 reminded me to reassess this, and I feel this, and my fuelling plan overall worked really well for the race plan and conditions.

6. London 2024, cancelled GSR, and the benefit of hindsight

After a performance like this, I couldn’t help but look back at London 2024 and feel cheated. I was in such strong shape in April, for 2:29 if not more, but as I’ve written before, something wasn’t right on the day and I took myself to a dark place to squeeze another 2:30.

To cruise round to 2:32:04 in Chester, barely a minute slower than London, on a much hillier course in fairly windy conditions, having neither trained for a marathon nor pushed myself hard in the race just confirmed my suspicions that London had been out of my control.

That said, the relaxation and control piece is definitely a factor too. I was perhaps inappropriately pumped for London and can learn from Chester in that respect.

The other big old dose of hindsight going on is that, as I write this in mid November, I can sadly report that my ten mile goal race that I had been saving the legs for, Great South Run, was cancelled at short notice due to Storm Ashley, and who knows what I might have been able to achieve at Chester if I’d really gone for it. That said, maybe if I’d pushed even five seconds per mile faster I’d have crashed and burned. Like I say, who knows.

So those are my six things that I thought worth mentioning or documenting for my own reflections, but above all, this was just one of my most enjoyable race experiences to date, and hopefully not my last opportunity to represent my country at the sport I love. Chester is also a beautiful city that we will definitely be going back to, and I’d certainly do this race again…just perhaps staying in an AirBNB with a spare sofa bed next time.

Since writing this, England Athletics have written their own blog on the day, and have mentioned me by name and my (unintentional) finishing straight battle for M40 second place!