Superb report from Louis Wood complete with the “Graph of Shame”.

Race Date: Sunday 23 November 2025

Following an enjoyable group trip to Seville marathon in February 2025 and thoughts of marking a couple of milestone birthdays in the Autumn a group of six (four Steel City, one second claim and one apostate) settled on San Sebastian (Donostia) in the Basque Country (northern Spain) as a suitable venue for another marathon-based short trip away. The lure of good food and drink, an autumn training block and the knowledge it would all be done before Christmas was too much to say no to, even if it was going to be my third marathon of the year.

Training

The Seville marathon in February was meant to have been a ‘training run’ for me, as I had Manchester in April as my main goal. However, I got a little carried away in Seville and it ended up being neither a flat out effort nor an easy one. Looking back, I probably should have targeted Seville as it was unexpectedly cooler than Manchester and a flatter course. However, it’s easy to see these things in hindsight!

Following a month’s recovery from Manchester, the plan was to keep ticking over until after the summer holidays and then get a strong 12-week block done before a short taper. I didn’t want to try anything too radical in training as my Manchester training had broadly worked well; it was just the heat on the day that scuppered me. The usual marathon training elements were in the plan: long runs on the weekend, plus tempo intervals and a medium-long run with a chunk of marathon pace thrown in at some point midweek.

That said, if there was a key session for me, it was the medium run. Getting the long ‘hero’ runs and the tempo intervals done has been drilled into my training for years. The session I’ve struggled to do consistently is the 11-15 midweek run, preferably with a good amount of marathon pace miles included. If there something I felt might make a difference, this was it – one-to-two-hour efforts I knew would be as hard on the mind as the legs. The trade-off was forgetting about speedwork for a while, though I did worry about losing a bit of edge. Coach always says that we ignore speed at our peril.

In the run up to Seville (and Manchester) most of us in the group included a fair number of ‘parkrun sandwich’ long runs – steady miles with a parkrun thrown into the middle or near the end. Socially this was a success, and having a destination for the long run was good, as was the fast-paced element of including the parkrun. However, the enforced break before and after the parkrun wasn’t ideal for replicating marathon efforts and it meant either starting very early or accepting you’d often be doing slower miles at the end of the long run because of the faster parkrun followed by a 5 min break.

With all this in mind, we mainly eschewed the parkrun/long run combo and I felt this made for better long runs. Pacing was more consistent and there was the freedom to start and finish when and where we wanted. Although not everyone trained together all the time, there was usually at least a few of us running long miles together each weekend and it’s so much easier to grind out 20 miles with company.

Personally, all was going well until early September, when I managed to catch Covid (or something similar). A bad chesty cough and low energy knocked out the best part of the month from my training plan. Watching the others steadily rack up the miles while I took enforced rest was dispiriting. When I was healthy again, I calculated I had six weeks with a two-week taper to get race fit. I wasn’t starting from scratch, but I was nowhere near where I wanted to be. It was tempting to take the easy option: coast through the rest of training, get fit enough to comfortably get round and drop thoughts of a finish time starting with the number two. But I knew that it was a short enough period that I could risk hammering the training without getting injured. Sixty miles a week for six weeks – still time to get all the long runs done, squeeze in some marathon paced efforts and give myself a shot.  So, I got my head down and forced myself to work hard. For six weeks I ground it out: five long runs totalling 100 miles plus, midweek efforts in the 12-14 mile range, marathon pace runs and intervals, a few cross country races the day after 20+ miles.

My training notes at this time got a bit repetitive: “no energy”, “didn’t want to do it”, “not enjoyable”, “tough”… but, by the time I got to San Sebastian, I knew I’d at least given myself a chance of a decent result.

The event and course

The race is relatively small and low-key compared to the bigger winter events in Seville and Valencia. There were 11,000 runners in total – 4,500 doing the 10k and 7,000 registered for the marathon. Running over much of the same course, the 10k started at 8:15, with the marathon at 9am. The field is small enough to not get caught in huge crowds but big enough to mean there are always runners around you. It’s also a marathon aimed at runners towards the faster end – the cut off is 5 hours and the last pen on the start line is 4hrs+. The most busy finish time was around the 3:20-3:30 mark. This means for those looking for a fast time it is ideal, but if you’re a runner likely to take much more than 4:00-4:15, you’re probably better running a bigger event.

The marathon course consists of three large loops in and around the city centre, each one taking a slightly different set of streets. The disadvantages of the course are the number of tight turns and if you find a section you don’t like, you’ve got to do it again, at least once. However, on the plus side you learn where the water stations are and when you’ll encounter the slight inclines and descents during the crucial final miles. The other bonus of hairpin turns is you get to see and cheer on your friends – a definite plus, especially towards the end. The loop is relatively flat – the whole course had around 90m of elevation – and features the main highlights of Donostia – the road along the beautiful sweeping bay in the city centre, a horseshoe segment around the Real Sociedad stadium and numerous – very well-supported- sections through the beautiful heart of the old city.

Targets

Despite a dire weather forecast in the week leading up to the race with torrential rain predicted across the weekend, the weather on the day was pretty much perfect: cloudy, dry, around 10-12 degrees and only a light breeze. As several of us remarked on the walk to start: “no excuses today”! With The Runner’s Book of Excuses not an option, we had to focus on our goals. With a 2:46 clocking banked from Seville, Paul was the most relaxed. He wasn’t aiming for a PB and was going to be happy with anything under 3 hours. Having come close to breaking the 3-hour barrier on a couple occasions, Dave was the most invested in his finish time. Training had gone well and everything was lasered in on getting round in less than 180 minutes. Tom and James had both trained well and consistently, but off the back of a year of less-than-optimal running, both were targeting a solid and even-paced race, if not quite at PB times, and were keen to enjoy the event. Alex had also trained consistently despite some niggling injuries and was aiming for 3:30. And then me. Right up to the morning of the race I wasn’t 100% sure of my target.

The week before the marathon I heard a radio feature on driving tests. Prompted by a story about an individual who’d spent more than £30,000 on lessons and exams, the presenters were discussing how many attempts were reasonable before you should accept you were never going to pass. In the way of these things, they moved on before reaching a definitive conclusion, but their conversation came back to me in the days before the marathon, albeit in a more running-focused form: how many times is it acceptable to try to run a sub-3 marathon before accepting it’s never going to happen?

This was going to be my 14^th marathon. Not all the previous baker’s dozen were serious attempts at running the distance in under 3 hours, but most of them were. You can keep trying, but time marches on and there comes a point when you have to accept that it’s probably not going happen. However, I’d clocked 3:03 in Manchester on a roasting day. That indicated I had a shot. My training hadn’t been perfect, but when is it ever?

As I toed the line, I decided I wasn’t going to go home wondering: I was aiming for sub three.

The Race

After being treated to an atmospheric musical Basque build up via the txalaparta, and a stuttering countdown that ended with the gun firing on ‘uno’, we were off.

The first kilometre was narrow and twisty and lots of the faster runners nervously weaved and bobbed as they wanted to hit target pace as soon as possible. However, this quickly calmed down and within 10 mins, Paul, Dave and I had settled into a group trotting along at 6:45/mile pace. There were some 3-hour pacers, but they’d started much closer to the front, so we were content to keep them ahead but in sight, meaning we avoided the crush of runners following them. The first lap was fairly uneventful – as it should be – and the three of us passed James and Tom a few times following the hairpins. Everyone was running well and in the groove. Around the 10-12k mark our group of three was slightly split up following a couple of speedy pitstops, but we were all maintaining the pace.

Although it wasn’t that hot, I was grabbing water at every opportunity. Mostly these were paper cups, meaning you rarely got much more than a few sips, but a few stocked bottles so that  you could get a better drink. That said, most runners took not a lot more than from the cups before discarding them in the bins or on the roadside. We remarked afterwards how wasteful this practice is and it is a shame nobody has yet managed to come up with viable alternative. In a cruel trick, a few stations were crewed by teenagers yelling ‘agua, agua’, only for you to discover – too late – that the cups were full of sticky, bright-blue powerade that inevitably and immediately sloshed all over you. However, other than that, plus one water station unhelpfully positioned directly off a sharp hairpin turn, the organisation and support was excellent. There were numerous opportunities to take gels and fruit if that was your thing too.

I avoided all that as I’d got a simple fuelling strategy. A Precision Fuel 30g gel on the start line, followed by another one every 6-7k, until I couldn’t stomach any more. Compared to a lot of gels they are almost neutral in flavour (a very good thing) and not overly sweet, so I have used them for a year or two. I think I managed four overall.

I got through halfway in 1:29:17 – given I’d stopped at a urinal for 20-30 seconds – this was almost exactly on pace – all my 5k splits around the 21:00-21:15 mark. I was starting to feel the beginnings of fatigue, but nothing more than expected. I knew Paul and Dave were still just ahead and had spotted James and Tom not far behind at the previous turnaround. Alex was further down the field, though I had seen him once on the longer out and back along the bay and he seemed to be moving well.

Not long after, Paul decided the 3-hour pace was too pedestrian and slowly accelerated, passing the pacer group and easing away. I was very gradually reeling in Dave and the pacers, and they gave me a target and something to focus on in the hard no-man’s-land miles before 30k. I kept moving steadily through the field and was pleased to find the pace wasn’t yet anything more than comfortably hard.

By the time we came back along the seafront for the final time (30-31k), I was starting to believe. It was getting to the stage where I could see the pace I needed to maintain was ever so slightly altering in my favour. I caught and passed the back two of the four 3-hour pacers. It was getting harder now, but where I’d started faltering in previous races around this point, I felt strong and in control. I knew if I could get to around 37k on target it would get mentally easier.

I dug in and when I reached the front 3 hour group shortly after, it was a useful distraction to be in a (dwindling) crowd. I had to concentrate on avoiding other runners and making sure I didn’t miss the water stations. It was difficult now – between 34k and 37k was probably the toughest section of the race – but I kept catching sight of the others and supportive yells and fist pumps kept the determination up.

I’d obviously started losing the ability to think straight, as when I got to the 40k mat just past the 2:50 mark, my addled brain told me it was a done deal, that I could almost walk it from here. Then I realised how close it actually was and pushed on. I got a roar of encouragement from Dave on the final roundabout, before turning into the final stretch. It was an almost perfectly straight finish and you could see the arch from about a kilometre away. I knew at this point it was on. It felt like I was speeding up, but Strava tells a different story. I was slowing, but it was going to be tight. So close that it was only in final few hundred metres that I knew the outcome. The finish line video shows me bobbling over the line, arms flopping, all form gone. What it doesn’t show is the highlight of the day – Dave, wide eyed, jumping and up and down, yelling “show me your watch, show me your watch!”.

2:59:46. My 14th marathon and first under three hours.

Dave had finished 25 seconds before me. We jumped around like idiots.

Paul had finished in 2:54, a big negative split. James and Tom ran together until the final mile, Tom pulling away to finish in 3:10, James a minute later. Alex was the only one who didn’t quite make his target, finishing in 3:33, but it was still a highly consistent performance. As the chart below shows, none of us tailed off significantly, showing how decent training and realistic goals means the famous marathon bonk/wall isn’t a forgone conclusion.

The rest of the trip was mainly accompanied by very heavy rain, so we got lucky with the weather during the race. It meant we had to spend time indoors, mostly eating and drinking, but when the wine, beer and pinxtos are so good and so cheap, it wasn’t a terrible hardship.

The race was won by Britain’s Thomas Holliday (Victoria Park Harriers & Tower Hamlets AC) in 2:22:34. First woman was Maite Arraiza Aramendia (Vicky Foods Athletics) in 2:44:59. Second place was Louise Flynn of Les Croupiers, so it’s obviously a happy place for UK runners. 5125 finishers in the marathon.

Striders results