How Chasing Sub-3 DRAMATICALLY Changed the Way I See Marathons (and Myself)

May 2, 2025 | By DLake

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The marathon is a chaotic mix of drama, beauty, pain, and hype — and for the first time, I finally understand why people keep chasing it.

It’s 8:00 p.m. on Friday, January 24, 2002, and I’ve been hearing from a mid-distance teammate, who also runs cross-country, that he finally got “the movie!” on DVD (remember those?!). I’ve never seen the movie before, but I’m excited because all the new to me guys I started training with to do longer-distance running are cool, and that makes me even more curious as to what they are so damn excited about.

The distance runners seem to have this tradition of watching “the movie” before track meets. The movie is a beautiful, dramatic documentary called “Without Limits.” It’s about one of the greatest distance track runners of all time, Steve Prefontaine (the second movie that’s not with Jared Leto). And in 12 hours of watching this movie back in 2003, I was about to do my first 800-meter track race after living the “sprinter” identity for the last four years. I love the idea of the longer 2-lap race, but I’m absolutely terrified of the pain I’ll go through since most track runners unanimously fear this as the hardest race in track..

A few weeks later, I completed a couple of races and participated in many short/fast and long/slow runs with the distance boys, and I realized I love running long distances! Something about it soothes me, like my brain taking a nice hot Epsom salt bath. This was 20 years before I found out I had ADHD, but it just quieted the chaos in my mind, so I kept doing it long after college track.

Back to the movie, and something that Prefontaine said. He said, “Let’s go for an easy 10 miler at 5 5-minute pace”.

That statement turned into a question that stuck in my mind for years: “How does one person run 5 minute miles for 10 miles at an “easy pace”. Cue the next 22+ years of distance running for me to find out how I can possibly do that and develop a marathon curiosity.

Love-Hate With the Marathon

I stop at curiosity because I don’t love the marathon. The marathon is hard, and I’m scared of it just like I was and still am of the 800-meter track race. Mainly the last 10km (6 miles) of the marathon. That’s where all of my long-run training ends, and my brain (which I have very little control over during hard/long runs) has to dig deep and pull the training receipts out to make sure I don’t kill myself. I can’t test out my end-of-marathon fitness in training like I can all the other shorter distances.

But after my first marathon in eight years (and my first real marathon that wasn’t a DIY random race or at the end of an Ironman Triathlon) at Ballarat, Victoria, Australia last week, I think I finally understand why people love this damn psychotic distance — most marathons play out dramatically like a feature film!

See Strava activity here.

I’ll never forget what Brenton said two days after the race. “How much fun is the marathon? You never get that kind of rollercoaster of emotion with a 5k.” Brenton ( 1betterrun.com/brenton ) was the runner whom I’ve been coaching, training with, and pacing at the marathon, aka the catalyst for me to finally take this marathon thing seriously.

Ironically, over the last eight years, I’ve been yelling at the internet like an old man waving a cane that most people are better off training for a faster 5k than they are for another marathon (see next section of this newsletter). While I still stand strong on that polarizing hot take, I think there is more nuance and grey area. I think a fast 5k, 10k, and even half-marathon will help your marathon times immensely while not destroying and injuring you; having one marathon a year is a strong spice to add to your soup of life.

I’ll say that the reason why I did so well in the marathon is because I focused so much on shorter distances like 3k, 5k, and half-marathons. Still, I’ll save that argument for another day.

Race Day: The Play-by-Play

So, what happened on race day? We didn’t get sub-3 hours as an official time. Brenton did, however, run his best official marathon time (PR/PB) by 3+ minutes, and he did go sub-3 hours on Strava and his Garmin watch. While we both only took the certified course time, I’ll add that we trained mainly in Strava and our Garmin watches. We overran the course by almost 300 meters (.25 mile), giving Brenton an extra 70-80 seconds. This was partially my fault as I realized one week before the race that there was a high chance we would overrun the course and needed to bake in buffer time and go 2-3 seconds per km (4-5 seconds per mile) faster without blowing Brenton up as marathon pace is just barely below his threshold.

We put in the new strategy and, unfortunately, didn’t have time to practice it and just had to figure it out on race day.

Everything was going great into the halfway mark (21.1km/13.1 miles) when we finally caught up to the pace group that had been 50-100 meters ahead of us the whole time.

The pace group felt like a party, hitting all splits perfectly at 4:12 min/km (6:45 ish min/mi) on our Garmin watches. Then our pacer had to go to the bathroom… and it all broke down from there. The other sub-3-hour pacers were way ahead and far behind. So he signaled a random half-marathon pacer who kept going and was running 3 hours to help Sherpa us along the way. Unfortunately, the group got strung out too wide, and too much yo-yo pacing meant we were a bit fried.

The Pain Cave at 32km and Beyond

At 32km (20 miles) I did my check-in with Brenton and he gave me the “not feeling great, mate” response. I was also starting to get mild cramps and heavy fatigue in my legs. I started panicking internally, but I knew that, although it had been eight years, I had been here before in many other races, such as the 5 K and a half marathon, and I just needed to calm down and settle in. Accept the inevitable slow pain that would set in and know that it would be over. Easier said than done.

We hit 36km, and he couldn’t keep up and slowly kept slipping further behind me. I told him that with this slowdown, we wouldn’t make it, but he would run his best time. He said he didn’t want to speed up and wanted to try to keep our original pace (Which felt like speeding up, but yeah, sure, I knew what he meant).

39km Cue right on time, a violent cramp in my left leg after not seeing a raised part of the road. I had to stop and walk for 2-3 seconds because I knew that if I kept going, it would 100% lock up, and I’d be on the side of the road, laid out screaming, “I NEED A MEDIC.”

This is when I realized Brenton was holding strong and speeding up. I yelled at him to just go and not wait for me, and that my work was done there. I felt bad for the last 3km, thinking I let him down, and then at the end, watching him run past me super strong to the finish line, I knew that I actually did exactly what he hired me to do – get him to a place he had never been before, run his fastest time and try as best as we could to break sub 3 hours even though it was super ambitious.

I’d say it was a success for both of us as I was less than 1% of my fastest marathon time ever (sub-3 hours), and this is eight years later, while juggling way more career and life responsibilities. I was also able to finally train for a marathon the right way and see it all the way through with no injury.

Takeaways and What’s Next

And now I’m even contemplating how to possibly run another marathon in October of this year and what/how/when my next marathon in 2026 would look. Yes, I’m definitely doing another one, I just don’t know how the logistics will work with my life. Training for a marathon took over my life at a time when I had very little extra space mentally, physically, and emotionally. I got through it and showed myself that I’m capable of way more than I think. But… I don’t want to do that again. My priorities are all out of whack, and I need to sort things out. Next time will be calmer and less frantic, and maybe even I’ll rerun sub-3 hours.

A quick list of some things I’m super grateful for:

• Brenton (the guy I paced/coached) became a proper sub-3-hour marathoner. He stuck with it and ground through the last 10km and showed himself he can do it — really proud of him.
• I got to do some epic long and fast runs
• My zone 2 is extremely high/fit (it starts at 140 and end 161 bpms) which means I can use that in training and racing big time moving forward.
• I was able to keep my fasting around easy/recovery days and carb loading around fast days, and not get glycemic index spikes
• I finally figured out how to lose a bit of body fat/not ideal weight while running a lot (lost a bit too much muscle due to timing of strength training around running – but I’ll sort that next training period)
• I showed myself I can run a lot and not get injured
• I wasn’t injured after the marathon, which is a first for me
• I recovered from the actual marathon way faster than I have in the past
• My strength gains were the best I’ve had, and I’m lifting the most I’ve ever lifted
• My achilles issues are almost gon,e even though I ran the most I’ve ever run for a few weeks
• I went in overcooked and know what my upper limit is — goal for the next marathon will be to go in undercooked and see how well I can perform without destroying my body a few weeks out
• I was able to train with someone for the first time (two guys actually) which helped with the day to day grind/bs when you’re in the middle-end of a marathon block and questioning your life

Photo by Adam Jaffrey