The London Marathon is the most iconic marathon in the world, but sadly these days it is not all that easy to gain an entry. As you may have been reading Marco gained an entry through a charity place sometime ago. He managed to raise a fantastic £2039.71 for the NSPCC, which is a great achievement.
After Marco's fantastic sub 40 minute 10k back in August I knew that he was running really well. We agreed on a target time of 3 hours 20 minutes for his first ever attempt at the marathon. I was well aware that Marco could probably run well under that but being his first ever marathon I also knew that it was important to be sensible and gain valuable experience for future attempts. The marathon is an incredibly tricky distance, over cooking things just a little bit can leave you in big trouble,sometimes only metres from the finish line, it must never be taken for granted.
Marco started the race a little too fast, I was watching his stats coming in on the London Marathon app and I was a little worried for the first few miles! Fortunately he settled down into a more sensible pace and found an excellent rhythm, one that he maintained through out the race to come home in an outstanding 3 hours 17 minutes and 17 seconds! Not bad for a debut marathon, so cool! When you consider that Marco averaged under 7 minutes 30 seconds per mile it puts his achievement into perspective, especially as it was his first ever go at the distance.
We are already talking about a future marathon and we are in discussion for a time of 3 hours 10 minutes which is certainly achievable. As you can see from the photo taken just after the race Marco looks incredibly fresh! However, I am not a fan of more than one marathon a year especially when an athlete goes for a fast time,that target will have to wait a while!
It has been awesome working with Marco and I am pleased to announce that we are going to continue to work together. In the coming months we are looking at a 1 hour 25 minute half marathon, so keep checking my website for further updates!
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