Following the Málaga calamity in December ‘25, my years-long quest to smash sub-3 continued. Ba ck then I had vowed to put it right - but in Málaga a year later, not here at the Boston Marathon with Faye and the crew. Just four months down the line, this always felt too hard a course, too short a gap, too much of an ask. More importantly, it was our first real time spent away together since we’ve had the kids, which was more important to me. On top of all of that, who knew what the weather would do? Boston is notoriously unreliable in that department. No surprise that friends who’d run it were saying ‘add at least five minutes to anything in your head’. My head was definitely saying ‘maybe not this time, Phil’, not least because my already truncated training block had been cut short by over three weeks thanks to norovirus and a stupidly incurred Achilles injury (moral: don’t train like you’re immortal).
I did felt good on the day, though, and also I felt that the pressure was off when we all got off the buses from Boston and I lined up in my pen with fellow Gibraltar athlete and new pal Tim Seed, on a cold, sunny and honestly pretty laid back morning in beautiful Hopkinton, 26.2 miles east of Boston city centre and the finish line. Conditions were perfect. Maybe, just maybe…
I felt strong and in control all the way around, trying to both concentrate and relax.
They say ‘don’t run the early downhills too fast, it’ll come back to bite you later’. I’d added the official race GPX file to my Garmin’s PacePro feature though, which had divided the course into 15 climb/descent-delineated segments, and which was giving me a goal pace, an actual pace, a segment progress bar and an overall ahead/behind for each - and nothing else: no heart rate, no overall pace, no kms gone/to go, just a segment to complete at the stated pace. This dividing the race up into manageable chunks really gamified the whole thing, and suited me. I kept saying to myself ‘you’re in control, be patient, complete the segment well’. I fuelled better, drank but not too much (it was cold) and felt I was doing everything right. Sometimes I was a bit ahead of goal pace (yes, including at the start), sometimes a bit behind, but always, I felt, sensibly close.
That said, I was a little behind overall goal for most of the race - the early downhills after a congested first kilometre, the flat section in the middle, and definitely at the infamous Newton Hills. However, I did enjoy the hills, my training in Gibraltar having been more than enough (they were nowhere near as steep). Indeed it was here that I noticed I was starting to pass people, simply by holding the predetermined paces for the segments, even though I had slowed down more than the watch thought I would on the uphill parts.
So it was that at the top of so-called Heartbreak Hill, I was just under a minute behind, but I felt pretty strong. Tired, but in control and with more to give. From there it is flat or downhill all the way to the finish. Apart from a little wobble at 38k where I felt my legs noticeably weaken (and thus had a bit of a mental panic thinking back to Málaga), I was running consistently faster than at any other point in the race, and nibbling away at the time deficit - 3 hours was definitely on!
In the last few hundred yards I knew I had it all to do, but had got it in me for a final, fast push.
Buoyed on by the frankly amazing crowds, just as they had been all the way round, I trusted the watch, kept it controlled, and as I rounded the final corner and the finishing clock came into view in the distance, I was on 2:58. At this point I decided to forget about the watch and ask myself a simple question: Phil, can you run to there in two minutes? I felt like a child again as I took on the challenge. I was overtaking people, but a couple of sprinters also overtook me and I couldn’t speed up to catch them - I really was now right on the edge of my capabilities, running at 5k race pace. However, I had a big smile on my face, I felt brilliant, and at some point with less than a minute to go I realised I was going to do it, crossing finally in 2:59:43. It was maybe a little close for comfort, but I felt proud to have run intelligently, kept control and - most importantly - not f**ked up again so close to the finish line. The mix of pride, relief and utter, acute pain in my legs the second I stopped running was like nothing else I’ve ever felt.
I’d achieved my goal! It was actually a slower pace overall than Málaga, but of course, I had completed the all-important final 200-yards this time, and there is no need for an asterisk next to this result - I have officially run a major marathon in under three hours. Despite the illness, injury, shorter training schedule and I guess a little bit of inevitable self-doubt following Málaga, it had finally all worked out. Sometimes, it turns out, it’s just meant to be your day.
There’s a coda, though. In my own words, my goal had always been to ‘run a marathon where the first number in my finish time is the same as the world’s best marathon runners’. As it turns out, I achieved it just in the nick of time: it would be just six days later when not one but two athletes broke the two-hour barrier in London, and the exact wording of my challenge would have put it maybe just a bit beyond my capabilities!