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Faster. Stronger. Longer. For a longer healthspan.

I’m 69 years old—and I’m training harder, feeling stronger, and performing better than I ever did as a young man. That’s not luck. It’s the result of focused training, smart nutrition, and a commitment to staying faster, stronger, and more resilient—well into later life.

The science is clear: regular exercise reduces the risk of major diseases like cancer, heart disease, and dementia. It also strengthens mental health, improves mood, and builds cognitive resilience. The message is simple: movement is medicine.

But this blog is about more than physical performance.

It’s also about:


• Mental resilience — how I’ve navigated the psychological toll of aging, injury, and transitions, and how I build a mental health toolkit to stay grounded.

• Life reinvention — after 50 years of intense work, I’ve stepped into a new phase: one of reflection, curiosity, and purpose. I write about travel, music, culture, and the search for meaning beyond productivity.

• Longevity — not just living longer, but living better. I explore the science and practice of healthspan: from supplements and training to rest, mindset, and recovery.

I wasn’t an elite athlete in my youth—just average. But today, I rank at the high end of performance metrics for my age group. That’s not because I chase perfection, but because I keep showing up. I train, I learn, I adapt. I fail sometimes. But I always move forward.

This blog documents what’s working for me: the workouts, the nutritional strategies, the science-backed longevity insights, and the moments that give life depth. I’ll share what’s real—and call out what isn’t.

The challenges I take on are real. Some I complete. Some stop me in my tracks. But if I hit every target, the bar wouldn’t be high enough. I’ll share the wins—and the setbacks—because both matter.

Join me.

Let’s build a life that’s not just longer—but stronger, sharper, and more alive.

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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. [...]
November 5, 2025The Start Line When the cannon fired on Staten Island, I felt calm. That surprised me. Coming back from serious injuries, the months of training, the self-doubt all melted into one thought: just run your race. Remember, average is good. Ahead of me I could see hundreds of runners shuffling through the start gantry, then breaking into a run onto the bridge. A beautiful autumn morning, skies perfectly blue, and the Verrazzano Bridge stretching over the horizon. Then I was at the start line. Time to run. Run to my average is good plan. I’d been thinking about this day for two years. The seed was planted in 2023, sitting in the grandstand at the finish line of the New York Marathon in Central Park, watching Tommy Rivs finish the same course. I’d had a major accident earlier that year and came back from it. Tommy had come back from an aggressive cancer, which saw him in a coma for 90 days. And here he was, showing us that the human spirit is indefatigable. Right there, right then, I thought ‘this race is for me.’ I went into a running store the next morning and bought my shoes. See this link to an Amber Sayer piece on Tommy’s story. Readers of this blog know that fate struck another blow only five months later, with a second serious accident. But it never for a moment dimmed my ambition to run the New York Marathon. I was determined to show people just how average I can be. And I kept working and working at it. And here I was. Straight into my groove, and starting the one mile ascent of the bridge, checking my pace and heart rate, and being sure not to get carried away by race day adrenaline. I looked to the left and there was an NYPD helicopter hovering, so close that I could see someone at the window waving to us runners. Behind him, the Manhattan skyline, perfect in the blue lagoon of morning sun. The Goal I chose 5 hours 45 minutes as a target time for my debut marathon in New York some months ago. My data trawling gave me this time as the average finish time for men in the 65-69 age group in major marathons. As a 195cm, 99kg, 68-year-old who had suffered two serious cycling accidents in the last two years, that seemed a challenge at the time. Average is good has been my mantra. Because it’s not really average. 0.02% of men in the 65-69 year old age group run a marathon each year: roughly 1 in 5,000. Average is not mediocrity in this case. And add to it the challenges I overcame to get to the start line, it’s better than average. I came into the year with a heavy dose of flu and didn’t start training seriously until February, but then went on to log 912kms of running in preparation. I also knocked out 150kms on the WattBike and did 38 strength sessions in the gym. You can see that I meant it. You need to work hard to be average. Two weeks before the event someone challenged me on me selecting my average target race time. I stopped halfway through my explanation; they had no way of empathising with what I’d been through. And I was virtually twice their age, so they didn’t have the inside track on what it takes to get the job done as you age. The Road To Average I knew that I couldn’t just go out there and start randomly running. My age, not being a lightweight runner, and the cumulative effect of two serious accidents needed addressing head on. For example, three pelvic fractures had affected my left hip and running gait. No excuse, deal with it. My right knee had taken a huge impact on the road and even now doesn’t straighten properly. No excuse, get some muscle built around the knee. I started running in May 2024. In a sling, as I had just had a titanium plate screwed to my collarbone. I was up and running, literally. Focused on general fitness for a few months, getting my strength back in the gym, and short, steady runs. I had some great friends patiently come out with me every second Saturday for a 5k run, and it gave me a focus. In the autumn I signed up with the South African coach Lindsay Parry. He and his team specialise in over-50s runners, and I felt he could bring some structure to my training. Three things stood out in the work prescribed. Strength training was a huge factor, with two and sometimes three sessions a week scheduled. We lose muscle mass from our late 30s, and by my age it can be a problem. The other two factors were taking recovery very seriously, and working on mobility. I am more mobile than at any time in the last thirty years. ’You Do Realise …’ I slogged through the winter and into the spring of 2025 with my average is good mindset. Fitness crept up on me really. In the summer, a friend said to me, ‘You do realise you are casually knocking out half marathons now?’ And he was right. I’d gone from seeing 5km as a challenge, to hitting over 20kms regularly. I need a scoreboard to convince me that I am making progress, it’s always been that way. My TrainingPeaks fitness tracking dashboard showed I was fitter than I had been for years. The Kubios heart rate variability score claimed I was half my biological age in cardiovascular fitness terms. My VO2 had moved into the excellent category for my age. All good. Somewhere along the way, I had dropped 11kgs of weight, and thankfully I remained injury free. Project Average was in full flow. I realised that consistency and resilience were the key elements of my training. Not the flashy shoes or the Instagram post. But the grind. Self doubt was a regular visitor to the space between my ears. I’m pretty certain I bored running companions to death by telling them I couldn’t get it done. It was hard to explain to people. I could never tell which body was going to show up to run. Some days, all good. Other days, I would get to 15kms and it felt like an accumulation of inflammation brought me to a stop. As though all my injuries were ganging up, possibly mocking me. If you struggle with 15kms, how are you going to handle almost three times the distance? The Long Run I pushed on. A couple of very good athletes—one who trained regularly with me, and one world-class athlete both said, “Trust the process.” So I did. And so it was that average is good started to come alive in October, when it was time for my long run. It seems to be an almost religious experience in the marathon world to have a long run around three weeks before the marathon. I was very honoured when five good friends turned out to accompany me on laps of Hyde Park in London. My pace was to be the target 7 minutes 50 seconds per kilometre, where I run for fifteen minutes and walk for one minute. That would bring me home in 5 hours 45 minutes in a marathon, if I could keep it up. Sadly for my partners, my pace was almost a brisk walk for some of them, and I appreciated their good humour. To their credit, they patiently stayed with me for 3 hours 45 minutes of what I call ‘The Shuffle” and we clocked up 30kms. Half of me was delighted, and my inner voice was saying, “You’re cooked. How are you going to do another twelve kms on the day?” Of course, I had to trust the process. The coaching team assured me that all was good. My training partners seemed to have confidence in me. As always, my inner voice was the doubter. Long run day was the day I passed the 900km running mark for 2025. This average is good stuff takes a lot of work it seems. Even average isn’t free in this life. It was almost time to find out. Arrival In The Big Apple We arrived in New York five days before the event. I was nervous, as I had spent a couple of weeks battling a respiratory tract infection, which resulted in me being on antibiotics until the day before we flew. The long run had clearly pushed my immune system hard. But thankfully, even though my heart rate showed I was still under the weather, my shakeout runs were good. I just needed Sunday to come around. The marathon transforms the city. The city that never sleeps, the city that has seen it all, transforms. Strangers in running shoes share nods of recognition. Running pop-ups appear in coffee shops. Hotel lobbies buzz with nervous laughter, and languages from around the world. A lot of people walking around in very expensive trainers. Thursday morning, it was expo time and I picked up my race bib. I also bought an official finisher’s jacket. Was I tempting fate? Was I being arrogant? That brought my self doubt back. I started to explain to myself that I could sell it on eBay if I didn’t finish. But a day later I realised the jacket was a signal of my intention. Two days out, I started to carb load and heavily hydrate. One day out, I sorted my kit. ASICS Kayano shoes, the orange ones with 247kms on them. Seven Science in Sport Beta Fuel gels and six sticks of Beta Fuel chews. Shorts, liners, shirt, socks, cap, race number, magnets, gel belt, nipple tape, Bodyglide, cap, glasses, heart rate strap, watch. Foil blanket for the wait in the village, wet wipes, Puresport electrolyte powder. I had every detail nailed on. Prepared. The work had been done. The kit sorted. The pacing and fuelling plan precise. Could I dare to be average? Bring it on. Race Day I slept well. A good sign. 5:45 and I was up and showered. Bagel, peanut butter and honey, banana, 750ml of water with electrolyte powder. Feeling calm. I stuffed my race fuel and a second bagel into my start village bag and took an Uber to Staten Island Ferry Terminal. Buzzing. Hundreds of runners, good natured, nervous, doing a collective shuffle towards the ferry, the captain of the boat pumping the ship’s horn and exhorting the crowd to get pumped up. They didn’t need it, but it was fun. A thirty minute trip to Staten Island, the Statue Of Liberty to the right, another ferry boat wrapped in vibrant pink, Nike swoosh and ‘New York Doesn’t Carry You. It Pushes You,’ in huge font down the side. We were processed onto buses for the journey to the start village. 50,000 people shuttled from ferry to start village over four hours. Epic logistics. People on the bus were quiet, lost in thought. Each of us carrying a private story. Each of us pondering the challenge ahead. In the village, I found a piece of cardboard and laid down near a fence, hoodie rolled up as a pillow. Still calm. I’d been calm all day. I believed in my plan. I’d followed the process, done all I could do. Time to show that average is good. Five Boroughs I was clear in my mind as I crossed the first bridge. Run fifteen minutes, walk one. Aim for 7:45 to 8:15 per kilometre. Gel after 25 minutes. Then alternate chew, gel, chew, gel every 25 minutes. Drink at every single hydration stop on the course. Don’t get carried away. Don’t let adrenaline undermine the plan. “Average is good” in my mind. Soon I was on the downward mile of the Verrazano Bridge, first walk break behind me, and arriving in Brooklyn. Now the true character of the New York Marathon started to show itself. The road was packed on both sides with supporters exhorting the runners to get the job done. Holding placards, or in fancy dress, or holding out food and drink for runners. I had heard about it, but that didn’t come close to preparing me. And the further we went, the wilder it got. My left foot was hurting in random places and I wondered if it was going to become a problem. Then my left hip flexor began to get sore at around 12kms, and started to get worse. “Uh-oh.” But I wasn’t going to stop, and just blocked it from my mind. Keep a steady pace. Fuel on time. Hydrate every mile. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Into Madness The crowds became more and more dense. One feature of this course is rolling hills, steep bridges, and very long straights. You can look up the avenues in Brooklyn or Manhattan and see thousands of runners and crowds all the way to the vanishing point on the horizon. At the 8 mile mark, my wife Mish, I ran over and gave her a kiss, carried on. On the other side of the road was film director Spike Lee sitting on a step ladder, taking in the proceedings. Every time I thought the atmosphere couldn’t get anymore intense, it did. Somewhere in Brooklyn the crowds had pushed through the police barriers and we were running down a narrow tunnel through a gauntlet of fans screaming and shouting. You see it in the Tour de France every year, now here was the running version. Live rock bands played on the sidewalks every so often, and I joined in with Sweet Home Alabama, the drummer saluting me with his sticks. Seriously loud mayhem. What a beautiful experience, the privilege of running this race in this environment, two million fans on the streets of New York. Williamsburg saw me enter into a surreal sketch. Suddenly Hasidic Jews were darting across the course in front of the runners. To be precise, the younger men darted. The older ones took a leisurely, somewhat defiant stroll across. I looked down at my watch and suddenly felt contact, as I hit a pram. A whole family crossing the road. To be fair, it was on a crossing, but the closed roads memo had gone missing. I survived, they survived, and thankfully I was soon approaching Queens. Halfway now. Starting to get serious. The Pain Begins It’s only a short route through Queens, and then onto the Queensboro Bridge at mile fourteen. It’s eerily quiet here, no spectators and only the sound of running shoes hitting the road. Off to the side a female runner stoops, vomiting. A male runner trying to stretch a hamstring, face contorted with pain. Similar scenes across the bridge, something of a war zone. I’m fortunate, my various aches and pains have morphed into a single wave of acute discomfort. I can deal with this. It’s the mental game now, grinding it out. The Queensboro is almost all uphill. But as you reach the end and see the road sharply dip, a hum appears. And it becomes a roar. Louder, then louder. Seconds later, First Avenue in Manhattan and the crowd noise goes up another few notches. Mile 16. It’s mentally tough here. First Avenue stretches on and on and on, to the painful horizon and further. A rolling straight line all the way to mile 20 in The Bronx. Focus on pace. Hydrate. Gel. Every so often a runner weaves and bumps into me. People are tiring now. The road around the hydration stations thick with discarded cardboard cups. Left foot. Right foot. It’s not long before I reach the 30km mark. Every step from this point is new territory for me. Time to answer the big question. Do I have it in me to do another 12kms? The Wall I take a left and cross the final bridge of the race, this taking me into Harlem. I pass an old woman on the course, stooped and gamely pushing on. Her vest announces it’s her 43rd New York Marathon. Respect. Then another left and it’s Fifth Avenue, heading south for Central Park. Mile 21. This is where people break; I’ve heard all the tales. The Wall is here. Keep going. Left foot. Right Foot. I pass a band playing Roy Ayers’ Everybody Loves The Sunshine, and it was just what I needed—I gave the band a fist pump, and got one back. The hard yards. This is where all the training paid off, and when I looked at my race metrics after, I could see it. To the 17 mile mark my pace was between 4.6mph and 4.7mph for all miles except for two; in those I ran at 4.8mph to make up for time lost at a the Portaloos. From mile 17 to the finish, every single mile was run at 4.6mph. I had turned into a human metronome. 900kms of consistent training paid off there and then, when it really counted. Central Park Mile 23 saw me parallel with the park. I knew the end was getting closer. I must have been struggling now, as more and more spectators started to urge me on. My name is Stephen, pronounced ‘Stee-vuhn’. I realised the shouts of Stefan, pronounced ‘STEH-fan’ for 23 miles had been for me. A TransAtlantic phonetic quirk. I pushed on. I can’t say I was feeling physical pain, but it felt hard now. Mentally hard, just keeping forward momentum. I was aware I was starting to grimace and I started to swear at myself. I dipped fully into Central Park at mile 24. Only two miles. ‘Only’ became a big word, I turned it over in my mind. Shortly after mile 25, we took a right, I could see the lights of the finish line somewhere up a hill to the right. Runners were dropping around me, some like they had been shot. A large percentage of people were walking now. Not me. I was going to run a marathon, and I could see my finish target was on. An odd quirk of the event taunted me. I had already completed the marathon according to my Garmin. Yes, I had. The weaving around other runners and drifting off to hydration stations, and not hugging the centre line had cost me another 0.7kms on my feet. A final turn. A sign 800m. Cruelly uphill now. Left foot. Right foot. Double intensity grimace. Swear at myself. The Finish I pushed as hard as I could up the final slope to the finish line. Again, I heard Mish shout to me—she had migrated from Brooklyn to the finish area—I waved, but was in my own personal hell by then. See the photo. But a hell that was resolutely doing 4.6mph, even though I felt I was swimming through treacle. There it was, the line. I heard the commentator call my name out, and punched the air repeatedly. Then stopped my Garmin; I was inside my target time, for sure. It’s hard to say what I felt. It wasn’t euphoria, there wasn’t any big rush of emotion. I want to say the feeling was ‘job done’. I had put the work in and trusted the process. Beat my target time and delivered mile after mile at a stunningly consistent pace. I didn’t hit the wall. I didn’t for a second entertain the thought I wouldn’t make it round the course. And now, I was a marathoner. For my age group, not one of the fabled 1%, but one of the more rarified 0.02%. I was in a sea of humanity and remember a medal being offered to me, then a recovery bag. Then we drifted right and picked up a huge, orange, hooded poncho. In front of me, an endless wave of orange-enveloped runners. I noted we were tending to rock from side to side, walking like penguins, as the post-run pain kicked in. A sign told us we needed to walk to 77th Street, a good ten blocks away, to exit. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” the guy next to me said, and we both laughed. I walked to 77th, then all the way back to 64th Street to meet Mish. It took an age, I shuffled like a geriatric. Around me, people were going down with cramp. And in some cases, emotion. Job done. Average Is Good A look at the numbers showed I had delivered the brief. 5 hours 38 minutes and 51 seconds. Age adjusted time of 4 hours 13 minutes and 42 seconds. And—trumpet blast—a percentage age-graded score of 48.49%. I’d run an average marathon time for my age group. Average never felt better. I’d been on a two year journey through two serious accidents and a major life transition, taken up a new sport, and delivered in one its major global events. I’d spent a lifetime striving, trying to be better, pushing myself to be an overachiever. There’s a light and a dark side to that, and the dark side of mental health challenges had been a load to bear, for me and those around me. New York taught me that excellence is overrated when it robs you of joy. 48.46% means consistency, resilience, and restraint. Average is good. Average is extraordinary from my perspective. I look down at the ink on my left shin. Nanakorobi yaoki in Japanese kanji. Seven times fall, eight times rise. I certainly did. Average isn’t the absence of ambition, it’s the presence of wisdom. 48.46% isn’t mediocrity, it’s a sign of balance. By aiming for average, I preserved the one thing that counts: enjoying the process, not beating myself up chasing an impossible goal. I didn’t settle for second best, I set out to run the long game—in training, in health, in life. Somewhere out on the 26.2 miles I realised that there’s a freedom in ageing; I was no longer performing for approval. I was doing it for me. The 26.2 taught me that structure and compassion can coexist; I had ground out huge training volume and left it all out on the course too, but I was also kind to myself. I told myself I had earned this. New York didn’t make me younger; it made me more alive. It reminded me that consistency beats intensity every time. Average is good. Very good. Talking With Tommy The next morning I looked for Tommy Rivs online, and dropped him a line on Instagram and told him my story. Told him I’d run 900kms wearing a pendant engraved with one of his mottos—‘Gently Rage’. I was surprised to get an almost instant response and we traded back and forth for a while. He said he hoped to share some miles with me one day. That will happen, count on it. We are all at the mercy of life, we don’t fully control events. I’ve found that, Tommy found that. The big test of life is how you react when life lays the gauntlet at your feet. Messages poured in from friends and colleagues and even strangers. Many said my story inspired them, and that’s humbling to hear. I didn’t run fast, but I ran with persistence and purpose, and that resonated with people. My body is coming around. A toenail has gone missing. I don’t have any injuries. There has been no euphoria, and no emotional slump either. I’ve walked around New York and talked to athletes still proudly wearing their medals. Everyone has a story, and every story is interesting. I’ve replayed some fond memories in my head from the race: being handed Haribo at the exact second I needed the hit, watching a Hasidic Jew spinning like a top through the traffic in front of me, the Roy Ayers band at mile 21 all saluting me. And, yes. I am doing another marathon. There is no doubt at all. Will it be hard work, will it test me, will it take scores of hours? Yes to all of those. Hundreds more kilometres—slower, wiser, deeper in meaning. Average isn’t a ceiling, it’s a foundation strong enough to build a long, health life upon. Average is good. See you on a startline somewhere in the world. [...]

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