What’s the time an average person finishes a marathon? Average people don’t run marathons. It takes a special kind of ‘sickness’ to spend 16 weeks training from New Year’s Eve, in sub-zero conditions, to go and run 26.2 miles for ‘fun’…

A first overseas race took us to the beauty of Switzerland and the Zurich Marathon – spring marathons are always in abundance, and admittedly, we’d tried for the Rotterdam Marathon but completely underestimated the popularity of that and it sold out within hours of going on sale. 

Instead, 13th April would be to another European destination. We flew via Amsterdam on the Friday afternoon and hit the inevitable delay on the connecting flight; where I’d made my peace with the idea that we’d be spending the night in Holland, rather than making it to Zurich… first concerns were allayed when KLM delayed the following flight, so we made it to our hotel roughly an hour later than expected, but still on the Friday night.

Saturday morning took us to the marathon expo to collect our numbers and race bags, including the finisher t-shirts… there’s something impure about getting your finisher t-shirt before you’ve even run the event – or maybe I’m just a bit of an old fart purist these days? After that, we took a boat tour of Lake Zurich and marvelled at how clear the alpine water was and how clean the city was. Definitely a recommended city break.

Then, marathon day arrived… there’s something very humbling about being told to keep the noise down by your 6-year-old, as you stand eating a porridge pot, half naked in your hotel bathroom. To be fair, it was 6 a.m., but as a parent, the irony of an early wake-up being grumbled about from the other side, wasn’t lost on me.

We headed to the start area and as you’d expect from a Swiss organisation, everything ran like clockwork – the bag drop was as slick as you’ve ever seen – we all got black, branded, drawstring bags to leave with our race numbers attached, before we headed for our start pens.

Again, Swiss timing was massively evident here – the race was stipulated to start at 8 a.m. and my god, did it… they literally had a clock with the current time showing, and the race started at 8:00:00. Not one to be late for.

As dear readers will know, my obsession for the last couple of years has been this pursuit of the marathon holy grail – otherwise known as the sub-3 marathon. I found the pair of 3-hour pacers and stuck to them like glue. There was a fairly well-sized group with no English voices to be heard – lots of German and a weird feeling of patriotism washed over me at times – I was running for my country, here! A lone Geordie voice in amongst these Europeans, trying to decipher the shouts of “HOP HOP HOP” from the crowds… “here, I’m ganna hop, ye dafties!” – nobody laughed.

These pacers were something else, mind – I’ve never bothered with pacers before, but seeing these guys in action was incredible. Constantly shouting splits (at least I think that’s what they were shouting), grabbing 12 cups of water at each station – six in each hand, and running along at 4:15/km pace and not spilling a drop, (bet they’re great when it comes to getting a round in!).

I stuck with them through halfway – clocking 1:29:58 at 21.1km- Swiss timing, once again. 3-hour pacers were bang on, and so was I… My watch even telling me I was 4 seconds +/- from my goal time of 3:00:00. I’d stuck with my gel strategy of one per every 5km, and it was serving me well, so far. But disaster was round the corner.

They say you shouldn’t try anything new on race day. They say it for a reason.

I’d trained with the same mix of slow-release carb gels and caffeine gels throughout, but even before I’d left the house on that Friday afternoon, I’d screwed myself over and I hadn’t even realised it. Fail to plan – plan to fail.

I hadn’t actually planned for what I’d need on race day – I had none of my usual gels left and completely my own fault, through lack of planning, I had none of them left. I grabbed some new ‘caffeine hit’ gels I’d picked up online – 100mg of caffeine per gel… the packaging suggested no more than four in one day. At this point, I’d convinced myself that four would be fine and that I could mix them in with other non-caffeinated gels and all would be grand.

30km came around and I was three caffeine hits in… “hmm, stomach doesn’t feel great… nah, crack on, Chris, you’ll be fine, be finished soon anyway, it’s only like two parkruns left”

Funny what your mind tells you in those moments.

I spotted someone doubled over at 35km, throwing up at the side of the road – with hindsight, I probably should’ve joined him. By this point I felt rotten – like the worst morning-after hangover from my student days – full-on nausea and a stitch that I didn’t remember developing – I honestly don’t remember which one came first, now – the stitch or the nausea, but they were both kicking my ass, and I reluctantly had to let the pacer group go to take some major deep breaths and some real soul-searching ensued.

Stopping has never been in my playbook – ever since the early days of Gibside parkrun; on my second ever run there, I’d stopped and walked up that killer hill and found it SO hard to get going again, since then, I vowed to myself that I’d never stop again, (even if I was running at walking speed – mentally, I was still running, regardless of pace).

I forced myself through that last parkrun’s worth of distance and got over the line for a 50-second PB. In the days and weeks that have followed, I’ve really been through the five stages of grief. A PB is a PB and I’ve now reached the acceptance stage, but I know I could’ve done better.

Fail to plan, plan to fail.

That mess I’d made of the gel ordering, or lack of, had kiboshed my three-hour attempt, way before I’d even laced up my shoes and necked that 6 a.m. porridge.

Within five to ten minutes of the finish, I knew those gels were sitting somewhere very north of my stomach… I found myself a lonely tree, and, if you remember the Little Britain sketches where the woman does the projectile vomit, this was me. They tasted the same coming up as they had when they’d gone down… in case anyone was wondering. Within seconds, I felt better. “Pint and some chips, please!”

All in all, this was only my fourth marathon and it’s all a learning curve – I’m an inherently positive person, and I’m already finding positives in all of this. There’s no such thing as failure – just a learning opportunity. I’d stuck with the three-hour pacers and hit the halfway mark absolutely bang on the money. I’d hit 25km on the money and even at 30km I was still on pace.

Who’s to say if I would’ve nailed the time with better fuelling, or maybe I’d have been looking for other excuses?! Thankfully, I have my first world marathon major on the horizon, with the Chicago Marathon in October. I’ll go into that with all of the things I’ve learned about pacing, fuelling, strategy and maybe most importantly, about myself, as a much better runner for my Zurich experience.

Another part of my acceptance in all of this is that ‘progress is progress’, no matter how big or small it is. 3:10:08 this year, beat my Manchester 2024 time of 3:10:58 by 50 seconds. Again, I go back to that first Gibside parkrun in 2017 – that guy would never have dreamed (or had nightmares?!) of running and finishing a marathon… That’s the guy I’m running against – nobody else – the previous iterations of myself, and every time I beat him, I grow as a runner.