Can I Break 2:50 At London Marathon?

Added: 2026-05-01

[00:00:00]The time has finally come to run the biggest and most important race of my life. London Marathon 2026. Can I run sub 250? Like every other runner on the course, I've put in hundreds of hours of training to try and achieve my goals.

[00:00:15]And like every other runner, I've got a story to tell. And this is mine. I don't think I should be a runner. I think that running to me as a kid was the worst thing in the world. I absolutely hated it. I was unfit. I was overweight. And I came last in every time we did cross country. I am able to run fast now. I am able to compete in trail races. And I love doing it. And I kind of want to show that little boy, that little version of me that if you just try, if you just do your best, then you can do great things.

[00:00:54]>> And we're off. London Marathon. What a beautiful day.

[00:01:01]There's pressure because there's cameras looking at me. And there's pressure because I've put pressure on myself to hit a time goal that's really ambitious.

[00:01:10]This is fast. Like to reach this time means running 8 and 1 half 20 minute 5ks in a row. To me, that's ridiculous. It's crazy. The pressure is that you just don't know what's going to happen on the day. I think it just brings a level of anxiety which is perhaps greater than I've had in other races.

[00:01:29]When you start any race, you just want your legs to feel fresh and sharp and fast. And I did not feel that today.

[00:01:36]They felt slow and they felt sluggish.

[00:01:38]>> How we doing? Let's see.

[00:01:42]2046 I've got on my watch, which I don't mind. 2015 is about target pace and ideally 20 My legs don't feel that great right now. Hello.

[00:01:54]>> But I'm just trusting that I've done the training.

[00:01:58]All the work is in there. And I often feel like this. I'm just telling myself.

[00:02:02]I often feel like this beginning of a marathon. So, just going to hang in there. Run to effort. Don't worry too much about pace yet. If I start out too slow, I can make that up later. If I start out too fast, I definitely can't.

[00:02:14]All I could do was get my head down and just run at the effort that felt right for me for this part of the race. I just had to focus on right now and getting through this next mile and this next 5k.

[00:02:25]I want to feel like I am racing this as best as I possibly can. And that means pacing it well. But it also means being brave. To run the time that I want, I need to run slightly uncomfortably fast.

[00:02:37]And success is being able to maintain that or it's making those smart choices that I need to pull back here ever so slightly to make sure that I can still handle this in the final 10k of the race. just 10k about 4130 I think. Try not to worry about that. Trying not to worry about pace and right now it's just to stay steady and make sure that I'm still in this race in the final 10k.

[00:03:13]That's what's so good about road races like this that road marathons.

[00:03:19]You get to feel like a hero. All you're doing is just going for a nice long run.

[00:03:27]London Marathon might be the race where I actually fell in love with running properly. I had done a few marathons before that and they'd been big races, but there was something about the first London Marathon I did that really clicked. It was 2016. I was running for a children's hospital who had looked after my nephew when he was ill as a as a baby. It meant something emotionally there. But running around the streets of London and the cheering that was there was something I had just never experienced in my life. To me, it was the sort of cheering that you would only get if you like a musician that got to play an arena show or you scored in the in the cup final. just this rising sense that you've done something incredible and thousands and thousands of people are cheering you. I remember I got to the end of that race and I kind of realized that my life was different after that point. There was the me that before I'd run the first London marathon and there was the me after.

[00:04:30]Just passed 15k quite a bit past it. Coming up on 10 miles. I'm not sure what my split was.

[00:04:38]I'm at an hour and three.

[00:04:41]>> I know that I'm ready to suffer in the race and I know that I'm going to have to suffer. The resilience I think that it takes to get through training is something that I often think about in the race. It's coming up on 12 miles just through Burmany.

[00:04:53]Never heard Burmany so loud. Last time I did London, the street was way wider.

[00:05:00]There's so many more people. It's like a scream tunnel for like a mile. And now we're about to go over Tower Bridge.

[00:05:12]One of the greatest points on any marathon anywhere in the world is running over Tower Bridge in the middle of the London Marathon. It's one of the great thrills that I've experienced in my life. It's so good.

[00:05:32]All those solo miles up and down the seafront, the early mornings, the workouts, all on my own. Then you come somewhere like this and thousands and thousands of people are cheering makes these early mornings everything just a bit more worthwhile.

[00:05:53]I'm not going to think about where I wanted to be. I need to think about where I am.

[00:05:57]and a caffeine gel and tower bridge has brought me back to life. So, let's try not to get over excited. Goals are changing through the day. Have a good second half. The PB is still on.

[00:06:10]I've struggled through the first half of this race a little bit, but I'm still in it.

[00:06:17]I'm doing everything I can to stay as positive as possible. Smile in the crowds. I'm just where I need to be right now. Not where I want to be, not where I thought I'd be, not where I might be in an hour. Just right here, right now.

[00:06:33]>> Putting out a goal is something that I've not really done before. I've said that I want to run fast marathons before, but I don't think I've ever said a time goal so openly. You do not know what's going to happen in a marathon.

[00:06:47]And I've got nothing to lose. If I fail, I fail.

[00:06:51]>> Can see Canary Wolf up ahead.

[00:06:54]That's where we're going for the next few miles.

[00:07:00]>> Canary Warf is a hard part of the course for me. It comes at a difficult time distance-wise. You're in those middle miles where you're still continuing to push, but the finish line is not yet in sight. And there's something about the way that the course winds around. It almost feels dizzying. You kind of don't quite know where you are. Your GPS is off. All I can do there is just maintain my pace and my effort as well as possible.

[00:07:25]Y amazing. Thank you, Carl. That's made my day. Morning ledge. I'll take it.

[00:07:38]>> Everyone used to say Canary Wolf was quiet, but it's not anymore.

[00:07:45]>> Come on, mate. You got this.

[00:07:52]I don't know how many more chances I'm going to get to stand on the start of a marathon feeling fit and ready to race.

[00:07:59]We did this lab testing a few weeks ago which said my potential in the marathon is 250. It didn't tell me I could run a 230 or 220. It said 250. I'm shooting to hit my potential. And I think getting to running older and also just being obsessed about it, really caring about doing the research and learning from other people has just made me more realistic in what I can actually do. And as I get older, the more I learn that and the more I know that I have to take these chances when I've got them because I often think about that little boy who was last running around that field just sad and not having a good time. I often think about him now and how I am able to run fast now. I am able to compete in trail races and I love doing it and I kind of want to show that little boy, that little version of me that if you just try, if you just do your best, then you can do great things. It's easy to quit. It's easily to mentally give up.

[00:08:58]And I know how it feels to give up in a run. And I'm not going to do that today.

[00:09:01]I'm still going to run as hard as I can cuz that's the example I want to set for myself.

[00:09:08]>> The thing that has really got me through today, it's the crowds.

[00:09:13]I didn't think I'd get emotional for that.

[00:09:19]I've needed the crowds today.

[00:09:22]And now we're heading home.

[00:09:26]My legs weren't working, but my mind was. And for me, one of the most important things you can do in a marathon is to stay positive. As soon as you let any negativity slip into your head, it's going to hit your legs.

[00:09:40]You're going to slow down. The whole time, all I was thinking was just got to keep going. You're still doing this. You have trained so hard for this. You're going to smile. You're going to use this crowd to keep you going, to keep your head up, to keep a smile on your face.

[00:09:55]>> Thank you to everyone who's out here.

[00:09:59]Everyone there said well done.

[00:10:01]Go Mark. Go.

[00:10:04]I hurt every single one of them.

[00:10:08]My legs were dead today and they gave him life. So thank you.

[00:10:14]Come on.

[00:10:22]I've run hundreds of miles this year.

[00:10:26]So many of those have been hard, challenging, into the rain, into a headwind, and I've got through them all.

[00:10:38]And each one of those has built up to the point where I'm now here doing this thing right now.

[00:10:46]And I always think back to those miles, those lonely solo miles.

[00:10:56]where I'm just grinding it out and getting it done to be ready for this.

[00:11:01]That's been hard, but not hard in the way I expected. Hard in a different way.

[00:11:06]>> In a way that needed >> so much mental strength and resilience hand.

[00:11:14]>> I'm proud of this one over the last six months. Not my fastest marathon.

[00:11:20]It's a good one.

[00:11:23]>> Sometimes the time doesn't matter. It's about how you perform. Today I performed the way I needed to.

[00:11:38]>> The finish line of a marathon brings out all sorts of different emotions. I think it's pride, >> relief, >> just gratitude. I think >> just for people that people that cheer.

[00:11:53]>> I never quite know how to feel when you get the medal at the end and you don't you haven't run the time that you wanted.

[00:12:01]But I'm also really proud of how I ran that race because that could have gone so much worse. So to be able to change the goals as I was going and to be able to adapt whilst running I think is something that comes from like good marathon experience. Doubt for me was a good marathon run a smart marathon run.

[00:12:17]A marathon is so long that things can change really quite quickly.

[00:12:22]And I knew that if I could just hang in there for the first 5k or 10k something might have changed. But I also knew that I couldn't wreck my race in that first 5 or 10k. had to hold back and had to run at the pace that I could still hold like 3 hours later. I don't want this to be a negative video. I don't want this to be a negative ending. I loved so much of it even though I had to work so hard to get through it. But I I definitely will look back on this one and be I'll be happy with it. 2 hours 5718 is a good marathon time. A very good marathon time.

[00:12:54]What next? The coldest beer in London, please.

[00:12:59]And then I'm going to let my legs recover and then I'm coming back and I am going to run a 249 marathon. What I want to do though, I want to go and watch the want to watch the race.

[00:13:06]>> I want to go and see Sebastian Sway.

[00:13:09]>> Right.

[00:13:11]be club practice.