My Manchester Marathon Experience

SportsShoes Web Team Manager, Josh Dawson, shares his recent experience of competing in the Manchester Marathon and explains what makes this race so special to him.

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Manchester will always be a special place for me, this is the city I came to for University, the city that made the most important music in my life and the city where I ran my first UK marathon. I had 4 marathons under my belt before my first Manchester Marathon in 2019, but had only previously competed in European cities. My first was Lisbon, followed by Amsterdam, Munich and Warsaw. If I were to look back on each of these marathons, I can’t say that I’m happy with how I performed at any of them and thinking about it, the training just wasn’t there. Were they amazing experiences and a great way of exploring some beautiful cities? Absolutely! I had a great time! Perhaps this was more important to me at the time.

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Although I did make progress with each of these marathons, my biggest leap forward was at Manchester 2019. I finished with an incredible 23-minute personal best and initially, I was delighted at this huge improvement. But once the ‘runner's high’ had passed and I was thinking back on my race over a well-earned beer, I knew I could have gone quicker still. The mistakes that I’d made were blatantly obvious and I should have known better. At the start of the race, I met up with a good friend from my running club (The mighty Hyde Park Harriers). We started the race together and I was feeling great, my legs were fresh from the taper and I was buoyed by the amazing support from the crowd. But rather than sticking to the plan that I had been working towards, I was trying to keep pace with my club mate and I was motoring off at a pace that would come back to bite me. It was a humbling experience and a valuable lesson learned.

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I really do love the marathon and I love how hard it is. There is no hiding place and if you don’t do the work it will find you out! It’s a distance that I have always been in awe of, even before I ran myself. My grandad was a great runner and I’ve grown up with his stories about the time that he ran the New York Marathon. To have a marathon time to be proud of is the absolute pinnacle for me.

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My name was in the hat again for Manchester 2020 and after a summer spent having a go at a few shorter distances, it was time to start working smarter. I had a good winter training block and 2020 was off to a good start with a shiny new PB for the half marathon. Who could have ever imagined what was to happen next.

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From the start of March, I was averaging at least 50-miles a week. As future races were being cancelled and running clubs were advised to stop meeting, hitting this target became my motivation to get out and run.

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A couple of months into the first lockdown, I started to work from home full-time. It was a time of high tension for everyone and the one part of my day where I knew I could forget everything else was my daily run. This was at the point where we were only allowed to leave the house once per day, so going outside really did become a novelty. Without any races on the horizon, there was no thought of hard sessions, hill reps or mile repeats. The most important thing was just getting out, enjoying the run and getting the miles in. As the months ticked over and certain restrictions were lifted, I was able to start running with a few friends again which was an incredible morale boost!

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Heading into 2021, I started to get a bit more specific with my training and increased the distance of my Sunday long run in the hope that a marathon may soon be a possibility. With big races I tend to have an A, B and C goal, with A being something to shoot for if everything goes well on the day, B is the goal that I’ve been working towards in training and C is a bit of a backup should things turn a bit sour.

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Race weekend finally arrived and after such a long build up, I was expecting the pre-race anxiety to be amplified. But this wasn’t the case. I was hoping that the additional training through the pandemic would pay dividends. I'd had the rub of the green injury-wise, my legs were well rested after a successful taper and I was loving how fast I was feeling in my Saucony Endorphin Pro running shoes. I made the trip across to Manchester the day before the race with my long-term marathon buddy, to take away the unwanted stress of travelling up the morning of the race. The only thing left to do was get a final high carb meal and then spend the rest of the day relaxing in our hotel speculating on our possible future glories.

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The start of the race brought a familiar and welcome sight, I had found my pal from my club. We lined up alongside each other once again but this time I would not repeat the mistakes of 2019. I happily watched him motor away from me and go on to smash his PB. My own race was going exactly how I wanted it to and the miles were flying by as we ran through Trafford, Hume and into the new stretch of the course in the City Centre. The atmosphere was incredible and like nothing that I’d witnessed before. This section of the course was tight with runners on either side of the road and countless spectators generating an unbelievable amount of noise. There’s no wonder this turned out to be my quickest mile, but it was time to settle back into the pre-agreed pace as there was still plenty of ground to cover. A long straight stretch towards Sale followed, this was the time to grind out the miles before the halfway point. The next section through Timperley is one of my favourites, mainly because I can’t help but think of Frank Sidebottom (Timperley’s favourite son) and the crowds here are always fantastic. As I got towards mile 20, my pace started to drift a little and I had an absolute disaster at mile 23. It meant my A and B goals for the race were out of reach, but I gave myself a good talking to and pulled it back to achieve my C goal which turned out to be a new PB by 3 minutes and 2 seconds.

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I really thought that my training would yield a quicker time but a new PB is not something to be sniffed at. Most importantly, I feel as though I’m a better runner than I was at the end of the race in 2019. I’ve already got my name down for 2022 and I’m sure that this time we won’t have to wait as long to get the opportunity to race again.

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You can follow Josh and all of his running adventures here.

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