I’m 69. I’m not beating Father Time – he’s undefeated, and one day he’s coming for a chat with me. Yet I feel excited. There’s a lot to explore, especially after my fifty-year working career has ended. And morphed into an exploration.
What I’m actually interested in is the quality of the years I’ve got left, and what you do with them once you stop performing for other people’s approval. That’s the thread through all of this.
So this isn’t a blog about defying age. I was distinctly average at sport as a boy, and I’m a distinctly average athlete now. The only thing I’ve got going for me is that I keep turning up. There’s no magic potion or secret gym routine to sell you. I’m not going to tell you my years have brought me a zen-like state of peaceful wisdom either.
Mental health issues have dogged me, and it’s still an everyday task to manage them. I talk about this because I find when I talk, people answer with “me as well”, and that leads to fulfilling conversation.
Stepping away from the framework of a career has opened up new possibilities, too. I hesitate to call my life stage retirement, as that conjures images of reclining and declining. Sure, stopping the 60- and 70-hour weeks was an adjustment. But it opened the door to opportunity I didn’t anticipate. My days remain full, and the possibilities keep expanding.
Three things I write about:
Faster, Stronger, Longer. — Training, strength, endurance, nutrition, the evidence, and what breaks.
The Mental Game — Depression, anxiety, identity, and who you are when the job’s gone.
Life In Full — The rest of it. Music, travel, the novel, learning the bass badly at 69.
A bit more, if it’s useful. I worked for fifty years, starting as a postman and the last twelve of them running an elite sports nutrition company. In late 2023, after a cycling accident that came close to finishing me, I stopped. Since then: two major marathons at 68, a good deal of orthopaedic repair work; working on my lifetime of depression and anxiety; a first novel I’m writing now and am mostly out of my depth on; and exploring new areas such as playing an instrument and learning to swim.
Given my professional background, I’m comfortable reading the research when I write about training, protein, or supplements — and just as comfortable calling out when something’s being oversold. I also hold a qualification in Clinical Organisational Psychology from INSEAD, and still take on a little board and coaching work. None of that is what this site is for. It’s just the ground I’m standing on.
Comments are open on every post, and I read all of them. If you want to contact me directly, [email protected] will find me, and I will reply.
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September 30, 2026Number 69
At 69, I travelled from London for the 69th running of the Monterey Jazz Festival. The first was in 1958, when I was one year old. The three days of music had a strong lineup, but I was there for the final evening to see three jazz legends, all in their late 80s, taking to a stage they had graced when I was still at primary school. Charles Lloyd, Herbie Hancock, and Ron Carter on one evening were a direct link to the classic era of Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk, and other legends.
The site of the festival oozes history, and we spoke with so many people who saw this annual event as a pilgrimage. Several had attended for more than 25 years. One woman we chatted to proudly told us it was her fortieth Monterey Jazz Festival visit. Having experienced it, I understand why. This was another step in my being pulled towards music as reinvention.
Charles Lloyd Revisiting Forest Flower
A beautiful late-afternoon California sky greeted Charles Lloyd on the Jimmy Lyons arena stage as he reprised his 1966 Monterey Jazz Festival performance, where he recorded the live album ‘Forest Flower: Charles Lloyd at Monterey‘—sixty years on, the now 88-year-old saxophonist and flautist revisited his masterpiece. The original album sold over a million copies and, unusually for a jazz album, became a crossover success.
I had seen Lloyd in Umbria Jazz earlier in the year fronting a sublime quartet, and in Monterey he changed the lineup, with drummer Brian Blade, pianist Gerald Clayton, and Larry Grenadier on bass. That’s a formidable band. Lloyd has always had a knack for surrounding himself with younger players who push him. The music stays alive because he never plays it the same way twice.
Lloyd led the quartet through the Forest Flower suite, becoming a dynamo as it progressed, drawing the crowd into his mesmeric sax solos. Flipping to the second side of the recording, the band dug deeper and layered their distinct voices over the music, with Lloyd taking them into an almost trance-like musical state.
I looked around the arena and saw people transfixed. The crowd had been noisy – too noisy – at the start of the set, but as Lloyd layered his notes and phrases so richly, weaving them in an impossibly complex matrix, people hushed.
Early in the performance, Lloyd would take a seat next to the piano between his solo work, but as the set progressed, he walked the stage more. Standing next to Clayton’s keyboard, encouraging him; gesturing to the ever-smiling Blade as he went from a whisper to a storm in one phrase; nodding to Grenadier, beckoning him to bring it on.
Lloyd’s funky, jerky dance in the final bars reflected the joy the crowd were feeling. I hope someone, somewhere, recorded this performance.
Herbie Hancock & Ron Carter
The sun had given way to a creamy full moon, and the temperature had dropped many degrees by the time Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter took to the stage. Monterey Jazz Festival artistic consultant Jason Olaine’s introduction promised a one-of-a-kind performance: “So, if you weren’t here, you weren’t here…”
Herbie and Ron were part of the ‘Second Great’ Miles Davis quintet, along with Tony Williams on drums and, arriving in late 1964, the great Wayne Shorter. Now the duo were back together at Monterey, celebrating Miles’s 100th birthday, having performed here as part of the Miles Davis Quintet in 1963.
The black-clad 86-year-old Herbie and immaculately-suited 89-year-old Ron were trying something completely new in front of the packed arena.
“This is just bass and piano,” Hancock commented. “I haven’t done this before. I’m new to this.”
But they didn’t miss a beat, getting down to business with a rich take on “Autumn Leaves”. Their constant eye contact telegraphed the joy of their experience. Hancock’s speed, subtlety, and dexterity on the keys always stagger me. Carter’s smooth moves and agility up and down the neck left me slack-jawed at times.
They continued through the hard-bop classic “Walkin’” and then onto one of my favourites, “Footprints” by their former bandmate, the brilliant Wayne Shorter. Somewhere in this sequence, Carter said to the audience, “You’re going to have to guess which one this is.” After an extended pause, “Herbie’s trying to figure it out too,” he quipped with a playful smile.
Then Herbie pushed back from the keyboard, and Carter was alone. The opening notes were so plain, so bare, I didn’t place them at first. Then the arena caught up with him: “You Are My Sunshine.” A nursery song, the thing you sing to a child to send them to sleep. A ripple of laughter and recognition rose from the audience, then fell into deep silence as we soaked it in.
Moving from precise notes to bending strings, often caressing a string so quietly, then hitting one loudly and crisply, his fingers walking and then sliding the full length of the neck, Carter showed all his skills.
I’ve spent the past three years trying to make a double bass sound like anything at all, and I know how much work sits under a note that sounds effortless. Carter made it look as simple as breathing. Herbie sat still, his eyes closed, a smile on his face, appreciating his colleague.
As the final note drifted into the Monterey night, my eyes were damp—an 89-year-old man playing a lullaby under a full moon.
Herbie then hypnotised the audience with a solo “Maiden Voyage”, building intensity with some elaborate runs high on the keyboard, a smile playing on his face, his eyes somewhere else. The audience was rapt.
“Thank you for coming out and watching two old guys having fun,” Carter remarked, to the roar of the crowd.
The duo closed out the tribute to their old boss with “All Blues” before taking a bow, and then another, in front of a huge Monterey Jazz Festival standing ovation. Carter’s elegance and calm held, while Hancock gave a small skip and turned to the crowd one more time, hands raised over his head. Sixty-nine suddenly felt young. [...]
May 30, 2026New Month, New Sport, New Goals
A month ago I ran the London Marathon. Didn’t enjoy it; see my account here. That’s two major marathons inside twelve months: New York in November 2025, then my recent ramble around East London.
Somewhere around mile sixteen of the second one, cranky taped knee, counting down the fifteen minute run intervals, I knew I was done with the distance. In Central Park last year, I said “Doing another” as soon as I crossed the line. On Pall Mall, I crossed the line and said “Never again.” And I meant it, both times.
But I’m not done with hard things. I’m done with that particular hard thing. There’s a moment in any long pursuit where you stop asking whether you can and start asking whether you still want to, and the honest answer to the second question was no.
So I flipped. From the road to the gym floor. From measuring myself in hours and minutes to measuring myself in kilos pulled off the ground. Next challenge: the deadlift over 60.
Pivot, Not Retreat
I want to be clear about what kind of pivot this is, because it would be easy to read it as retreat. The marathon got hard on my knees, so I went and found something gentler. That’s not it. I could run another marathon. I could probably do an ultra, and indeed toyed with that idea for a while. But I don’t want to, it’s a conscious and well thought through decision, not an impulse.
I’m going to the weight room now. Strength work isn’t the soft option. The deadlift over 60 is no pushover. It’s a different discipline with its own brutality, just compressed. A marathon punishes you for hours. A heavy single punishes you for seconds, but it asks for everything in those seconds, and there’s nowhere to hide. You either lock it out or you don’t. Head swimming, feeling dizzy, the whole gig.
The lift I’ve chosen as my measuring stick is the deadlift. Straight Olympic bar, conventional stance, the bar pulled clean from the floor to a standing lockout. No trap bar, no straps doing the gripping for me, no machinery. Just the oldest test there is: can you pick the heavy thing up?
People ask why the deadlift and not the squat or the bench. There’s an honest version and a true version, and they’re both worth saying.
The honest version is that my body made some of the choice for me. Twenty-seven fractures in recent years, a plate holding one collarbone together, and the other sporting a hefty lump on it. A shoulder that won’t rotate far enough to even get under a squat bar. These aren’t things I dwell on, but they’re facts, and they take two of the three big lifts mostly off the table. My bench is weak and probably always will be. The squat isn’t a strength question; it’s a question of whether I can physically get into the position, and the answer is no. You work with the chassis you’ve got. You don’t make an excuse; you adapt and find a way to do something hard.
But the true version is simpler than all that, and I’d be lifting this way even with a body that had never broken: I just love the deadlift. There’s nothing between you and it. No rack, no spotter, no fussing with bar position or depth judges—the weight is on the floor and either it comes up or it doesn’t. It’s the most honest movement in the gym, maybe the most honest test there is. A bar, the ground, and the question. Everything I’ve ever found satisfying has had that shape to it. The deadlift just makes it literal. I’ve heard it called The King of Lifts, and I buy that.
What “good” actually means
I’m a numbers person. For my marathons I wanted to run the average time for my age group. I thought that was fair, given that at 194cm and 100 kg, I am hardly the archetypal small whippet of a runner.
So the first thing I wanted was an honest benchmark. Not gym-bro folklore – “a real man pulls double bodyweight” and all that – but something built on data I could interrogate. For the deadlift over 60, I wanted a real target, grounded in fact not myth.
The reference I landed on is Strength Level’s standards, drawn from over twenty-two million logged lifts. What makes them useful is that they cross two variables most charts ignore: bodyweight and age. Both matter enormously. A 125 kg pull from a twenty-five-year-old and a 125 kg pull from a man of 69 are not the same achievement.
Here’s the framework. The tiers run Beginner, Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Elite. Advanced means you’re stronger than roughly eighty per cent of lifters; typically the product of five-plus years of consistent progression. For a man taken at face value, the Advanced barbell deadlift sits around 228 kg, which is a long way off and frankly not where I’m aiming. As an average athlete at best, I could never have lifted that at any age.
But the age curve tells the real story, and it’s worth understanding rather than hiding from. The standards taper steeply past fifty. By the mid-sixties, the Advanced threshold for a man drops to 143 kg. That’s not the chart being kind. That’s the chart being accurate about what a human body does across decades, and about how much it takes to hold ground against that decline.
Which brings me to Thursday. I pulled 125 kg. Conventional, straight bar, clean lockout. A multiple Olympic gold medallist remarked to me, “That’s a lot of tin to shift at any age.” I’ll take that from an all-time great.
So by the honest, age-adjusted reading, I’m at the higher end on Intermediate. My target for December is 135 kg. That was the target I pulled out of a hat back in January. If I get that, it puts me at the top of the Intermediate band, not the bottom of it. A year ago that sentence would have read as fantasy. Now it reads as a training block.
And if you know me well enough, you know that 135 kg is the goal. But that the number 143 kg will be in my mind. Long limbs, a long bar trajectory, and a lot of creaking mean the big number is out of reach. But it’s still a serious deadlift over 60. It’s good to dream, though. Right?
Why any of this matters
I could dress this up as health optimisation, and it is partly that. But “it’s good for you” is the kind of limp phrase that lets you skip the gym, so let me put some hard numbers on the table instead.
Start with the lift itself. Grip strength turns out to be one of the most stubbornly reliable predictors of how long you live that anyone has found. The big PURE study, tracking close to 140,000 people, found that every 5 kg drop in grip strength came with a 16% higher risk of dying from any cause and a 17% higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, and that grip was a better predictor of death than systolic blood pressure. Read that twice. Your handshake tells the actuaries more than your blood pressure cuff does. And the deadlift, the lift I happen to love, is essentially a grip-strength contest with your whole posterior chain attached.
Now the training. The dose-response numbers are almost comically encouraging for the lazy. A 2022 meta-analysis pooling sixteen studies found that any resistance training at all cut all-cause mortality by about 15%, cardiovascular death by 19%, and cancer death by 14%, independent of any cardio you do. The sweet spot is absurdly small: the maximum benefit, a 27% reduction in the risk of dying, lands at around 60 minutes a week. Not 60 minutes a day. An hour a week. Beyond that the curve flattens; do more if you enjoy it, but you’ve already banked most of the longevity dividend by the end of one decent session.
And the two stack. When researchers combine strength work with aerobic exercise, the effects are additive, not redundant: people doing both showed roughly a 40% lower risk of death from any cause than people doing neither. A year of running, then, wasn’t wasted base; it was the other half of the equation.
The honest caveat, because I promised data and not a sales pitch: these are observational studies, so they show association, not proof of cause, and the people who lift tend to do other sensible things too. But the signal is large, consistent across populations, and biologically plausible. The research is unambiguous on one point in particular: the steep part of the benefit curve is at the low end. Getting from can’t to can matters far more than any vanity number above it. It’s not an easy task to deadlift over 60. The 143 kg is for my ego. The first 60 minutes a week is for my life.
Feeding the machine
You can’t out-train a bare cupboard, and this is the part that doesn’t surprise me. I was almost obsessive about my in-run fuelling, and made sure I recovered well. But the short, sharp, intense loads of the deadlift over 60 damage a lot of muscle fibres. Recovery is still the key, and although I don’t need to carry gels with me everywhere, protein is a huge consideration.
The science on protein and ageing muscle is clear and slightly uncomfortable: older bodies are worse at turning protein into muscle than young ones — “anabolic resistance,” they call it — so we need more of the stuff, not less, exactly when most people start eating less of it. The consensus for an older adult who lifts sits around 1.2 to 1.6 g per kg of bodyweight per day, well above the official RDA that was set merely to prevent deficiency rather than to build anything.
For me at 100 kg, the top of that range is about 160 g a day. I’m currently landing around 175 g, which I’ll admit took real effort to reach and to count. Distribution matters as much as the total: the research points to 20–40 g of protein per meal, spread across the day, because older muscle needs a bigger per-meal hit than young muscle to switch protein synthesis on at all. One giant steak at dinner doesn’t do it; four solid feedings do. You can bet there are some impressively large bags of whey protein in my cupboard. (And a fine white powder scattered on the worktop, all too often.) I seek out any opportunity to ingest a few grams of protein throughout the day, even when I’m out and about.
Around that foundation I run a deliberately short supplement stack, and I’m sceptical of anything longer. Vitamin D with K2 through the dark British winter, magnesium, omega-3, B12, and collagen. I won’t oversell these. The honest position is that protein and the training are the engine, and the supplements are, at best, the oil. Vitamin D and omega-3 have reasonable evidence behind them for people my age; collagen is more speculative, though the connective tissue argument is plausible enough that I’ll keep taking it while my tendons learn to love heavy weight again. None of it substitutes for the 175 g and the bar on the floor. It just keeps the edges from fraying.
The point of all of it — the protein, supplements, the hour a week — is the same. I’m not optimising a spreadsheet. I’m trying to arrive at eighty still able to pick heavy things up off the floor.
Who I’m doing this for
But the numbers aren’t really why I’m doing it. I’m doing it because I’ve reorganised the next twenty years around who I want to be rather than what I’ve already achieved, and one of those identities is someone who is strong. Not strong for his age, with the apology built into the phrase. Just strong, with the age noted as context. Deadlift at 60? No; deadlift, any age.
Sixteen months and 1,800kms of training taught me I can suffer for hours. Now I want to find out what I can do in seconds. The bar’s on the floor. December’s coming.
Let’s go. [...]
May 6, 2026Tough Day In East London
London Marathon was tough. I believe any endurance event decides what it gives you. London decided to give me a tough day. But if it was easy, what would be the point? Right? Pheidippides died at the end of his marathon in 490 BC. I expect his carb strategy wasn’t spot-on, and adidas didn’t drop the new carbon-plate shoes in time.
I’ve said several times since the event that I didn’t enjoy a single minute of the run. I’ve turned that over in my head a lot since 26 April, and I stick by it. Not a single minute.
Ominous Signs?
I went into the London Marathon fitter on paper – well, on TrainingPeaks anyway – than I went into the New York Marathon. I had stuck to my training plan virtually flawlessly. Some knee problems bothered me, and I abandoned a 3-hour 15-minute training run with a month to go after less than two hours. I’ve never quit a training session before, not cycling or running. That was a worry.
But being me, I went on the WattBike the next day and made up the missing running minutes by pedalling in circles.
When my ‘proper’ long training run, two weeks before the event, came around, I taped up my knee and went for it. And managed the 3 hours and 45 minutes comfortably. All was well. Except for a large blister, which I put down to my sock choice.
But I had been mumbling and grumbling for weeks, to anyone who would listen or even not listen, about my body being beaten up. My knees in particular were feeling it. It was playing on my mind. I had the best help possible: a great osteopath, and a coaching team who listened carefully. But my body was waving like a drowning man, saying ‘are you sure?’
Perhaps it was simply cumulative load. I had run 1,250 kms in the year leading up to New York, and while I had reduced volume and frequency up until the end of 2025, I had kept running. Then I went into my 12-week block leading up to London, and by race week, my last 12 months of training were 1,250 kms- so the volume had kept going- indeed roughly 1,600 kms across the two events.
Perhaps it was just my body saying that I’m almost 69 and 101 kgs and fairly battered. Fit but fragile was my going-in position.
London Marathon: Race Day Prep
No complaints leading into the race week. I had tapered very well, but then had a gastric bug on the Wednesday of race week, and was feeling grim on Thursday. I missed that day’s taper run. Friday I felt a lot better; Saturday I felt that bug was a memory; I certainly wasn’t going to use it as an excuse. If it took 5-10% off the top, so what? There would be thousands of subpar people lining up on the day.
But the Saturday morning shakeout run was a bit ominous, as my knees weren’t the best. But good enough to go. And while I wasn’t logging massive sleep that week, Friday night I got 8 hours. Didn’t lift my mood. London Marathon fever was all over town, and I was still moping.
Race morning was a story of small distractions, which, when related two weeks later, sound laughable. But at the time were anxiety inducing. Could I get my race number on cleanly? – No. And it almost made me late out of the door. Would I forget my pre-race carb load, consisting of a bagel? – Yes. But I got out of the house on time, and was at the start village early.
For me, the interesting part was my lack of enthusiasm. I wasn’t excited. I wasn’t nervous. Just a bit blank. The only positives of the race village were me finding a banana on the floor to partly make up for the bagel taunting me from home. There it was, bathed in sun rays, lying on the grass, a gift from heaven. I looked guiltily around, and checked the skin from all angles. Down it went. And there were plenty of Portaloos, which is always a plus. Overhydrated marathon runners know exactly why the latter is a big plus.
Eventually it was time to assemble in the pen. I wandered over, conscious that I hadn’t spoken to anyone. That was a contrast with New York, where the start village was a positive and chatty place. Maybe my heavy introvert vibes had formed into an exclusion zone around me.
Off we went. Green Wave 12. Very much at the back of the field. That suited me: not many people passed me, but I was always overtaking someone, which is a mental boost.
Let’s Go
My target time for the London Marathon was 5 hours 29 minutes. I’d done New York in 5 hours 38 minutes and thought my extra touch of fitness, plus experience from my rookie outing, would help me. This experience amounted to not getting stuck at on-course Portaloo stops for too long and not veering off course, thereby adding extra metres. I failed miserably on the second count, running even further in London than New York. By the end, both of these factors cost me seven minutes.
Anyway, off I went. I knew exactly what pace to run and had been hyper-disciplined in New York. The reasons for me going too fast in London for the first 5-6 kms elude me. It might even be that I felt good. From around 10 kms I settled into my perfect race pace. The Moony Shuffle.
In both my marathons, I’ve had a deal with myself that I don’t want to be beaten by people in fancy dress. It was a blow to be passed by a witch carrying a broom. As the day went on, I passed a brain, a tooth, a tub of Vaseline, a tub of Tums, several rhinos, and a man playing an accordion. At one stage just before halfway, I heard the spectators greeting Elvis, who was apparently coming up on my left shoulder. Didn’t get me. Eventually I caught the witch. She’d given me a good run. I slyly slid past in case she saw me and put a spell on me.
Tower Bridge
From the late teens in kms, I started to find it hard. New York had seduced me into thinking a marathon was all about a metronomic pace, and that was how it went. But today… Various parts of my body were hurting, and something about the heat was dragging on me. My left hip flexor was not my friend, as much as I tried to block the pain out.
By the time I reached Tower Bridge, I wasn’t in a great place mentally. Luckily for me, my friends Yannick and Chris were waiting for me at the bridge exit and gave me a much-needed boost. “I’m dying on my arse” was the only comment I could make to them. Onwards.
Turning east from the bridge, I passed the official halfway point, and could see runners streaming the other way, on the road to the finish. Including a guy with a fridge on his back. He looked how I felt. I looked past him and saw the 22-mile marker, and at that point I felt the next nine miles to get there would be tough.
I’ll say something unpopular at this point. I simply didn’t enjoy the route or the crowds at the London Marathon anything as I did in New York. I know it’s a home crowd and historic sights, and all that. But the route and atmosphere were nothing like my New York experience. You can possibly say that because this was harder, my brain was reading it differently. But for me, New York every time.
London Marathon: The Death Zone
Deep into east London now. Millwall, Blackwall and names like that flashed past my eyes. We went into an underpass, and it felt like a descent into a dark, damp hell. If hell was littered with gel wrappers and water bottles. I slowed and walked for a moment. The first time I’d done that in two marathons. Another km or so later, as I came up a rise, I did the same again.
But so what? That’s sensible, right? In my mind it was the beginning of the end. I was going to gradually slow and stop. Everything hurt by then, and I felt tired, and I saw my heart rate edging down. Later, when I looked at my pace chart for the race, I saw that kms 24 and 25 were the slowest.
It went through my mind that I would be crushed if I gave up. All the months of training for the London Marathon would have come to nothing. I would have to explain to everyone that I didn’t get it done. They’d be nice to me, but in their minds they’d be thinking ‘old man’s past it.’ You can see I wasn’t in a Buddhist state of mind by then.
Something clicked, and I decided I could get this done, and I locked back into a rhythm. Still not pleasant, but I was moving again.
The Home Stretch
I reached the 31 km mark and realised this was as far as I’d gone in training. It was all new territory from here. The part you can’t train. I looked at my Garmin watch for about the 1,000th time and did a calculation. I could probably hit my target of 5 hours 29 minutes if I stuck to the steady pace I trained at. Let’s go.
Dehydration was taking its toll now, and I was grabbing as much hydration as possible from the roadside. I had to make a quick decision on a splash and dash at one of the Portaloos, and I went for it, as it had been close to four hours since the last pitstop. I figured if I did that, there’d be no more distractions. Or excuses.
I vaguely remember Commercial Road as vibrant, passing through a noisy, colourful LGBT zone. A guy shouted ‘come on big fella!’ in my ear as I drifted close to the barrier. But I was largely in my own world. I missed my Puresport colleagues, and I know they’re a noisy bunch.
On to the Embankment and my friends Donna and Pete gave me a big shout. The done thing is to pull over and get a selfie, but I was afraid if I stopped, I wouldn’t start again. Then I heard a familiar voice and two men shouting; it was my wife Mish. Close to home now. Somewhere, some minutes had evaporated, and it was touch and go for my target time.
The crowds had been stacked for miles and miles, and the Embankment was a sea of humanity. I just couldn’t connect with the crowd at all. A lot of people were walking now, and it was tough to weave through them.
I was coming up around St James Park and could see Buckingham Palace. In my head, I was pushing hard now. In the real world, my pace was sluggish. Although, to be fair to me, km 40 was my fastest of the day. It’s all relative, I guess.
The final 385 yards down The Mall, and some people were grinding hard, me included. Some were celebrating and taking selfies while running backwards. Not for me. Head down, maximum shuffle speed. I was giving it everything, but when I watched a video of me crossing the line… l could have been picked off by any number of fancy-dress runners at that point.
5 hours, 29 minutes, 17 seconds.
Did it!
A gratifying end to a tough, tough day.
Still didn’t smile.
Aftermath
I had my medal draped around my neck by one of the brilliant volunteers. Hats off to the thousands of London Marathon volunteers who give up their whole weekend to make the event run so smoothly.
I was a part of history. This was the largest marathon ever, with 56,640 runners; indeed I have run in the two largest marathons in history. This event also saw the two-hour barrier broken by two runners, with the top three men all breaking the old world record, and the first woman breaking the world record too. Sabastian Sawe finished in 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds. If you did the course on a Lime electric scooter, with the throttle nailed open, he would have beaten you by a minute.
I decked a bottle of water in one, then began to trudge to the end of The Mall to meet Mish. I stopped and leaned on a fence for a moment. And couldn’t move for ten minutes. The brain was sending messages to my body, and my body was saying, “Yeah, right.”
After I got my shuffle on, the next challenge was to step down from the kerb to the road. I attracted an audience of Lucozade sampling staff then. They were eager to help, and I was eager to be left alone. Eventually, with the help of a lampost, I navigated the three inch drop.
Three minutes later, there was my welcoming committee. Mish, then Darren and Donna. I may have smiled around then. If I did, it was the first time all day. The London Marathon 2026 was the hardest thing I’d ever done voluntarily.
What Next?
When I finished New York Marathon, I immediately said, “I’m doing another.” When I finished London Marathon, I immediately said, “Never again.” And I meant it. I still mean it.
That’s my last dance.
0.02% of people in my age group do a marathon. I don’t know how many do two marathons, but you can bet it will be an even tinier percentage. I was 421st of 593 men in my age group. As a 6’5″ and 101kg diesel with a touch of wear and tear, I’ll take that.
Despite a rough London Marathon, I feel incredibly blessed. I took up running in late 2024. To have run two majors since then is special. 1.3m people have applied for the 2027 version of the event. It’s not easy to get into one, let alone two majors.
I was pleased to raise £3,937 for Cardiomyopathy UK as well. That’s over £10,000 raised for charity in my two marathons. Another reason I’m blessed. That people have the faith to back me, and that I can help those less fortunate than I am.
But I’m done now. I’ve logged 1,600 kms of running in my pursuit of two marathons. With osteoarthritis in both knees and the likely onset in my left hip, it’s time to take a new approach.
While my fitness is very high and my cardio on a par with much younger men, I want to play the long game. It’s not just about the years; it’s about the years in good health. Muscle mass and mobility are higher on my agenda than the ability to grind out a 42km run. Three gym sessions a week, plus one or two 5km runs a week is my target. I may well mix in some rucking, as previous outings have shown it to be a surprisingly good workout compared to running.
I’m looking forward to the next stage of my fitness journey. No goals this time. Although I reckon dipping under 27 minutes for a 5 km looks good for my age group.
London Marathon (Johnny Cash)
London Marathon, you’ve been livin’ hell to meYou’ve blistered me since nineteen sixty threeI’ve seen ’em come and go and I’ve seen them dieAnd long ago I stopped askin’ why
London Marathon, I hate every inch of you.You’ve cut me and you scarred me through and through.And I’ll walk out a wiser weaker man;Mister Sawe, you can’t understand.
London Marathon, what good do you think you do?Do you think I’ll be different when you’re through?You bend my heart and mind and you warp my soul,And your stone walls turn my blood a little cold.
London Marathon, may you rot and burn in hell.May Tower Bridge fall and may I live to tell.May all the world forget you ever stood.And may all the world regret you did no good.
London Marathon, I hate every inch of you. [...]
March 16, 2026One Tough London Marathon Training Week
There are weeks in marathon training when everything clicks. And then there are weeks like this one — when everything clicks, you hit your targets, and your body very politely tells you it has had quite enough, thank you.
This was one of those weeks. The road to London has been a hard one this week. Six days of hard training, culminating in a 2-hour 50-minute long run. Goal achieved. Box ticked. And according to the plan, I am now sitting three weeks ahead of where I was at this equivalent point in my New York Marathon build. By any measure, that is a good place to be with six weeks to go to London.
But I am feeling the fatigue. Properly. And I have learned enough over the past couple of years to know that this is not the moment to push through it regardless.
Listening To The Experts
I have been working with the team at Coach Parry, and after an honest conversation about how I’m feeling — the tiredness, the disrupted sleep, the general heaviness in the legs — their advice was unambiguous: take an easy week. Let the body consolidate. Do not add more stress to a system that is already doing significant work. The key indicator for them was sleep quality, and mine has not been where it needs to be. Until it improves, the smart play is to back off the load.
This is not the easy decision when you have a countdown clock running in your head and a startline you can almost see in your mind’s eye. But it is the right one. Adaptation happens during recovery, not during the session itself. The hard week only becomes useful if I absorb it properly. The road to London is a long, tough one and I need to be sensible.
I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to all the team at Coach Parry. They get what a 50-plus runner has to do to finish a marathon; they’ve seen the movie before and know what to tweak and when. I’m simply a happy customer; I get no incentive from them. I would say that without their advice and expertise, I wouldn’t have completed New York, and I wouldn’t be where I am now in my London prep.
Runners Knee: Addressing It Head On
The other significant story of this week has been my left knee. Runners knee — patellofemoral pain, in clinical terms — has been nagging, and I have been working with Guy Gold, my osteopath, to get on top of it properly rather than just managing it session to session.
Guy has given me a rolling regime to address the tissue quality around the knee and, crucially, specific work to strengthen the VMO — the vastus medialis oblique, the teardrop-shaped muscle on the inner quad that plays a critical role in stabilising the kneecap. Weakness here is one of the most common drivers of runners knee, and strengthening it is a more sustainable fix than any amount of foam rolling alone.
The combination of soft tissue work and targeted VMO strengthening is already making a difference. This is the kind of marginal gain that matters enormously over a six-week build — keeping the structure sound so the engine can keep running. At 68 years old, the road to London is long and it’s by no means just about fitness: it’s about getting the body to the line in the best possible condition.
Fuelling: Getting The Numbers Right
Nutrition has been a real focus this cycle, and I feel like I am in a good place with it. On the long runs I am aiming for 85 grams of carbohydrate per hour, which for endurance performance at this intensity is well-supported by the science. I alternate between SiS Beta Fuel chews and gels to keep things interesting and avoid any gut fatigue from a single format — variety helps palatability over a long effort, and palatability matters when you are two hours in and your enthusiasm for eating anything is waning.
Hydration is going well, and I have been using Puresport Ultra Electrolytes throughout the week. Getting sodium, potassium and magnesium right during heavy training blocks is non-negotiable for performance and recovery, and I have noticed a real difference in how I feel through the latter stages of longer efforts.
On the recovery nutrition side, I am targeting 150 grams of protein per day. That is a deliberate, evidence-based target to support muscle repair and adaptation at the training volumes I am running. To hit it consistently, I supplement with a high-quality whey isolate, to which I add 5 grams of creatine and 10 grams of collagen. The creatine supports power and recovery; the collagen, taken with Vitamin C, is specifically aimed at connective tissue health — tendons, ligaments, cartilage — which becomes increasingly relevant the deeper you get into a marathon build. Fuelling the road to London is key: energy, hydration, recovery, sensible supplementation.
The Small Things That Matter: Injinji Toe Socks
Not everything in marathon preparation is dramatic. Some of the most useful changes are small, quiet and slightly unglamorous. This week I switched to Injinji five toe socks, and they have been a genuine revelation for my feet.
The simple act of having each toe individually sleeved makes you acutely conscious of your foot placement. I find I am much more aware of driving through all five toes on every stride, which appears to be reducing my tendency to pronate and is definitely reducing the hotspots and foot pain that have been accumulating over higher mileage weeks. My feet have taken a battering this build. Anything that gives them a better shot at arriving at the start line in reasonable condition is worth taking seriously.
The Road To London – What Comes Next
The plan from here on the road to London is clear. One more significant long run, then a proper deload week to let everything consolidate. After that comes the big one — the 3-hour 45-minute long run, the peak of the entire build, before the taper begins.Six weeks to London. The start line is starting to feel real.
I am running for Cardiomyopathy UK, a cause that matters deeply to me. If you would like to support the fundraising, the QR code and donation link are at the top of my home page — any contribution, large or small, is genuinely appreciated and goes to important work.
Now: sleep, easy miles, and patience. [...]
March 1, 2026Back To The Grind
It’s eight weeks to London Marathon. I don’t feel on track, although my fitness score on TrainingPeaks says I am. I haven’t posted here since before Christmas. That doesn’t mean I’ve been doing nothing, rather that I’ve been focused elsewhere—more of that to come on another blog. I carried on running after my recovery from New York Marathon. To be honest, I didn’t hit every session, but equally I certainly wasn’t MIA and I kept a decent fitness level up.
TrainingPeaks gave me a surprising stat as a Christmas present. While most apps tell you what you did in the year, this one told me what I had done since I started using it, some 15 years ago. I was trying to climb out of a just turned 50 and depressed, overweight and fat stage, and bought a bike and started to train. In that 15 years, I have trained, on average, every alternate day. Bike or gym. Pleased with that. I don’t like to think what my health would be like if I hadn’t.
My proper Coach Parry marathon training block started a month ago, and I flubbed my first long run, given I was in Paris for the weekend, and travelled on Sunday. But since then I have been hitting the plan. When I have missed, it’s been the gym session; I’ve nailed all my running sessions. Indeed my long run last week was 2 hours 40 minutes. All good, the numbers say I’m on track.
What’s Different
But I am dragging, that’s for sure. Today is the last day of my deload week, and I don’t feel recovered at all. My 45 minutes easy run yesterday was tough. Sounds silly right?—training for a marathon and a short run feels tough. If I look at my Fatigue score you can see I am still recovering after a big week last week. I can only assume my body is recovering and adaptation is happening.
Take another look at the scores, and you can see that my fitness score is better across 28, 90, and 365 days.
As mentioned above, I trained all winter, and you can see that in these scores. I was also fortunate to skip the winter cold/flu/man flu this year too, which helped.
But my head is different leading into this marathon. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been down this road before. Training for New York, my first marathon, was a novelty. I didn’t know how hard the training would be. Now I’ve experienced it, I tend to step into my ASICS shoes thinking, “not this again.” Anyway, eight weeks to London Marathon, I can’t skip any sessions now.
Oh No, Not Again
If you’ve read this blog, you know that I decided to do Paris and Berlin Marathons this year. Then my body and my osteopath starting mumbling about longevity, so I stepped back and decided to start a longer term health regime. More emphasis on the gym and the all important strength training. Less emphasis on running, and mainly 5k runs, with the odd 10k thrown in. All the science points to this being the best approach for me, if I want to live a long time and in good health. As opposed to living a long time and being frail.
So I canned the two marathons and started my new regime. For a week. Then I was kindly offered a London Marathon spot by Dan Strang and Pete Cooper, the founders of the Coopah training app. I pretended to reflect carefully on it for a few days, but my inner mind had decided. Do it. I think a marathon career of two events, run in my seventh decade, and it being the two biggest marathons in the world is cool.
People around me have given up trying to understand whether I’m running, not running, retired, or talking to myself in tongues. London Marathon it is. Last one. I promise. No really, this time. Eight weeks to London Marathon. Then I quit. That’s it.
Cardiomyopathy UK
I ran for charity last time, and raised over £6,000 for Sir Chris Hoy’s Tour de 4 charity. I want to raise money for a good cause when I do these daft events. So this time I am raising money for Cardiomyopathy UK.
Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle that can affect anyone at any age—including fit, apparently healthy people who have no idea anything is wrong until it isn’t. It’s the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young people, and yet it remains largely invisible to the public, underfunded, and underdiagnosed. That’s why this charity resonates with me—the notion of fit young athletes suddenly dying is something we should address.
Cardiomyopathy UK exists to help change things. Supporting patients and families through what can be a devastating and isolating diagnosis, funding vital research, and pushing for earlier detection. It’s the kind of charity that works quietly and without fanfare, which is exactly why it needs people willing to make some noise for it.
So I am slogging the 55,000 steps around London in the hope I can raise money for this great cause. My page is here.
Lace ‘Em Up
Enough talking. Eight weeks to London Marathon and I need to hit the road. I’ve got a brand new pair of ASICS Kayano 32 shoes. I’ve used these shoes for a long time, as they give a great balance of support and comfort for a big unit like me— 6’5” and 101kgs. I am now taken hostage by them, oddly. My feet grew by a full size in my 1,200kms of pounding the road and I am now a size 15 UK shoe. And the only people in the UK making a true size 15 shoe suitable for a marathon are ASICS. I’m in the footwear version of Stockholm Syndrome.
Time to shut up and hit the road. I will check in regularly from this point. Thank you for reading, and if you could drop £10 in my fund raiser and you say “blog” I will match the £10 with a donation of my own. [...]
December 21, 2025It Matters More With Each Year
My 2026 goals: I’m raising the bar. Next year I turn sixty-nine, and instead of easing off, I’m deliberately making things harder.
The plan is simple on paper: two major marathons, not one, and a clear step up in strength. I want to be able to pull five clean reps of a 125kg deadlift, or squat 100kg for five with control and confidence. Not as a party trick. Not for social media. But because those targets represent something I care about far more than numbers: they make me harder to break.
I know these goals are hard, and there’s a decent chance I won’t get them done. But the process to get them done is the real reward, and the events themselves are the measuring stick of my progress.
At this stage of life, being harder to break is freedom. It’s resilience. It’s the difference between a body that can absorb stress and one that fractures under it. I don’t want to be one of those people who stops doing things because they’ve become fragile.
As always, my disclaimer: I don’t want to live forever, and I’m not in denial about my age—I’m an old man. But I do how some choice as to the quality of the fourth quarter of my life. I know that better physical condition means a higher quality of life. Being the oldest guy in the gym, wearing out and not rusting out in an armchair.
I didn’t arrive at these goals in a vacuum. They’re the logical continuation of what happened in 2025, when, at sixty-eight, I ran a marathon in 5 hours and 38 minutes, finishing inside my target time of 5:45. That experience reshaped how I think about ageing, training, and what’s realistically possible for older bodies when we stop treating decline as inevitable.
But this isn’t really a story about last year’s race. It’s about why I’m choosing to push forward now—and why that choice has implications far beyond finish lines or gym lifts. I’m raising the bar because I believe it will improve the quality of my life, not the length of my life.
Why People Keep Telling Me This Is Unusual
One of the most unexpected parts of the past year hasn’t been the training itself, but the reactions to it.
People regularly tell me what I’m doing is rare. Some say it with admiration. Others say it with disbelief. The odd ones look at me as the crazy old man. Quite a few follow it with a pause, then something more reflective, commenting on a parent’s health and lifestyle.
They’re not wrong. Statistically, what I’m doing sits a long way from the norm.
Only a tiny fraction of men run marathons at all in a given year. Filter that group by age, and it shrinks dramatically. Filter again by height and weight—6’5”, around 100kg—and it becomes smaller still. Add in a recent history of injuries, arthritis, and the accumulated wear of decades of activity, and you’re looking at a sliver of a sliver.
That rarity isn’t something I chase, but I don’t ignore it either. Because when people respond this way, what they’re often reacting to isn’t the marathon or the barbell. It’s the underlying idea that physical decline after sixty is optional to a much greater degree than we’ve been led to believe.
And that idea matters. I’m not setting myself up as some superior, smug guy. That’s not the intention at all. Rather, I’m saying we have a choice, and I’ve made mine. I was less than average at sport as a kid, but as an old man I’m in the top few percent of my age group, not because I’m a great athlete; but because I’m still here, still doing it, consistently. Because I believe it’s a much better lifestyle than the alternative.
2025: Proof Of Concept, Not A Victory Lap
When I ran the New York Marathon in 2025, the time itself—5:38—was satisfying, but it wasn’t the most important outcome. What mattered was how I arrived at the start line.
I’d lost 12.5 kilograms. I’d rebuilt consistency after injury. I’d combined endurance work with regular strength training, daily mobility, sensible supplementation, and—crucially—enough rest to allow adaptation rather than breakdown.
For the longest time, I wasn’t sure I could finish a marathon, and I probably bored friends to death saying that. It was the process leading up to New York that mattered. Steady and consistent, with the reward being better health. It’s worth saying that I went through all my preparation uninjured, testament to the low key but consistent training. I didn’t overreach, even when I felt good. And many times I went out for a run when I really did not feel like it.
The race wasn’t an act of defiance against age. It was evidence that the system worked.
At sixty-eight, I didn’t feel like I was borrowing fitness from the future. I felt like I was investing in it.
That distinction is everything.
Why I’m Doubling Down At 69
It would be easy to treat that marathon as a closing chapter. A “one last time” story. That narrative is familiar, comforting—and deeply misleading.
I crossed the finish line in New York and within minutes said to myself, “I’m doing another.” Because I knew I was better for the months of training.
Physiologically, the body doesn’t respond to birthdays. It responds to stimulus. Aerobic capacity declines fastest in people who stop using it. Strength disappears quickest in those who avoid load. The downward curve isn’t driven by age alone; it’s driven by disuse.
That’s why next year isn’t about maintaining. It’s about progression. I’m raising the bar. And not just a little.
Two marathons force me to stay aerobically honest. They require consistency, not heroics. The strength targets force me to keep loading bone, muscle, and connective tissue in ways that directly oppose sarcopenia and frailty.
Together, they form a deliberate counterweight to the biology of ageing.
The Argument No One Likes Talking About
There’s a reason this matters beyond personal satisfaction.
Cardiorespiratory fitness is one of the strongest predictors of all-cause mortality we have. Not cholesterol. Not weight alone. Fitness. People with higher aerobic capacity live longer, full stop. The difference between low fitness and high fitness can translate into a 50–70% difference in mortality risk. Here’s a peer reviewed paper on the subject.
Strength tells a similar story. Measures of muscular strength—sometimes as simple as grip strength—predict lifespan, fall risk, and recovery from illness. Resistance training two or three times a week is consistently associated with lower death rates, independent of cardio. Here’s a peer reviewed paper on the subject.
This isn’t motivational rhetoric. It’s epidemiology.
When people tell me they wish their parents would pay attention to physical health, what they’re really saying is that they’ve seen the alternative. They’ve seen how quickly life narrows when strength disappears and breathlessness becomes normal.
What I’m doing now measurably shifts those odds. That’s why I’m raising the bar.
I’m not delusional. Father Time is undefeated, and one day he’s coming for a chat with me. But I can make a positive choice to ensure that the days between now and that conversation are of the highest quality.
Bigger, Older, Battered – And Doing It Anyway
Rucking, Steep Incline, 20 kg Pack
At 6’5” and around 100kg, I don’t have the frame of a typical endurance runner. Every step carries more load. Every mistake costs more. Add in a history of cycling accidents, joint issues, and the slow creep of arthritis, and caution becomes non-negotiable.
That’s why this approach works. I don’t train to impress. I train to repeat. And I’m raising the bar, consciously adding to the training load.
Weight loss wasn’t cosmetic. Dropping 12.5kg reduced joint stress and inflammation, improved running economy, and made consistency possible. Strength training didn’t compete with running; it protected it. Mobility work didn’t make me supple; it kept me functional.
And rest—often misunderstood as weakness—became a tool. At this age, recovery is where gains are earned.
Why Inspiration Matters: Even If That’s Uncomfortable
I’m cautious about the word “inspiration.” I’ve been told what I achieved in 2025 is an inspiration. As a weapons-grade introvert, the label makes me curl up in embarrassment. But I’ve come to accept that if people see what I’m doing and reconsider their own relationship with movement, that matters. If one person laces up a pair of trainer or clocks in at the gym because they’ve listened to my message, job done.
I don’t think people of my age should run marathons. Or start slinging an Olympic bar around at the local gym. Most shouldn’t. But even walking with intent, or treating their physical health as something they can still influence, rather than something already decided, is a huge win for them.
If someone sees this and thinks differently about their own ageing—or nudges a parent, a partner, or a friend to do the same—then the ripple effect is larger than any race result.
It’s important to remember I am not an athlete. Older people can’t look at me and say, “It’s okay for him, he’s athletic.” – because I’m not. I’m just a guy who started on one spot and said “I think if I do this consistently, I can get to that spot. And feel better for it.”
The Point Of All Of This
As I head into my sixty-ninth year, I’m not chasing youth. I’m building robustness. I’m widening the margin between myself and decline.
Last year showed me what was possible. Next year is about extending that logic, calmly and deliberately.
It’s not going to be easy. 2025 saw me clock up over 1,000 kms of running, another 200 km on a WattBike and more than forty gym sessions. Next year I need to recover from an April Marathon, then prepare for Berlin in September. And I need to do a better job in the gym; as the road miles went up this year, the reps in the gym went down. I can’t do that again, remaining injury free on the road was due to gym work.
I am clear that this isn’t about mindset alone. It’s about physiology, statistics, and probability. Training this way doesn’t guarantee anything—but it materially improves the odds of living longer, staying independent, and remaining capable well into older age.
And for me, that’s reason enough to keep raising the bar. [...]
