Race Date: Sunday 19th April 2026

There is an old joke about Scousers, Brummies, and so on being asked what England’s second city is, and all nominating their own, until finally a Mancunian is asked and says, ‘Probably London’. On a glorious day just the other side of the Pennines from here in England’s least self-aggrandising city, you could see why Mancs are like that: they know how to organise a marathon and the support is easily the best I’ve experienced outside of the capital.

The drive from the west side of Sheffield is fairly charming at that time of the morning and despite a small petrol emergency that I realised I had to deal with when I got in the car – not the last time that day I’d need to divert course due to poor planning, as we shall see – I was able to leave my car at Sale Water Park. Highly recommend this, by the way: Manchester traffic is bad enough as it is without chucking in a 42,000 person marathon and Man City v Arsenal on the same day.

After the usual logistical worries about bag drops, toilets, etc I was in the start pen on time in red wave, just behind the elites. You get herded quite early but with big numbers like these it makes sense and the system feels very controlled and purposeful, which is not always the case at other races. I was delighted to be joined there by my fellow Steel City rival and occasional training partner Paul Hargreaves, so we could discuss times, tactics, aches and pains to fill the time before the gun.

After a few burnouts recently chasing the Shangri-La of a sub-3, I was determined not to go off too quickly. I waved Paul off on his way (he was aiming a little quicker) and dealt with the busy first few km before settling into a groove which put me on track to come in at just over 3 hours and take a few minutes off my PB (set in 2019 and which I’ve come close to a few times without ever quite dipping under). Other than one or two slightly excitable sections, I stuck to the plan – but my legs felt heavy, the sun was out and threatening to get too hot and memories of a couple of bad blowouts in the last couple of years were never far from my mind. Boosted by a couple of nice moments, though – saluting a massive Devon flag as a tribute to the county I grew up in; feeling a weird urge to hear Sandstorm by Darude  and going round a corner moments later to hear someone playing that exact song – I settled into the work of ticking off the miles before the real business starts with about 5 to go.

The issue I did have, though, was the sciatica I’d brought into the race and which I was planning to manage with ibuprofen as I went; it’s not normally an issue as long as I do that. I started to dig around in my belt – none there. Gels, Vaseline, pickle juice and a range of headbands were all there, but nothing to quell the pain I could increasingly feel down the back of my left leg. I looked out for a St John’s ambulance or some other medics for a while but saw none and after mulling over my options, decided the only way to do it was a quick detour into a Spar as the time cost of lugging a seized-up leg for miles was surely going to be worse. I had no money, so was relying on the kindness of strangers and my eternal gratitude goes to the elderly chap who said ‘Are you short of cash, lad?’ and gave me a quid. The detour was probably 90 seconds or so, and well worth it: I scarfed down the painkillers and once again got into the rhythm of knocking out each km at around 4m15s.

The course goes through plenty of the nicer suburbs of Manchester and the support from places like Altrincham, Timperley and Sale was absolutely fantastic, keeping my legs turning over as the odds on taking a chunk out of my PB started to look better and better. But there was still the last few miles to go and as I clocked up 35km, the occasions I’d slowed dramatically in the last section came ever more to mind. Against that, my legs were feeling better now than they had at the start, and I was even starting to pass some people. Positive signs kept up my morale up: the Devon flag appeared again, someone was playing The Streets’ anthemic Weak Become Heroes, I got a morale-boosting shout from someone in an England vest (I think this must have been Caroline B or Kate Waddicor – thank you!) and most importantly, I had the pickle juice. I assure you I’m not shilling for Big Pickle when I tell you it’s an absolute game changer – my legs were barely cramping up, suddenly there was only a couple of km to go and I knew it was on. I lost a few seconds here and there but as I crossed the line (there may have been some big boy language at this point, I admit) there was no doubt that a big chunk had gone from my PB. At 3:03:43, it was 3 minutes off, the sense of a job well done – and the immediate formulation of a plan to have another crack at getting under 3 hours in the autumn.

Shout out to the 27 Striders who completed it this year, and especially to Connor Brown and Caroline Brock who were the first Steel City to finish with Caroline setting a new F40 club record of 3:01:36.

Steel City’s women have been gradually munching their way through some of the older club records set in the main by the indomitable Mary Picksley. Mary still holds some sixteen club records although, admittedly, some of these are at ten and fifteen miles, distances which are rarely run these days.

Caroline Brock explains “that Manchester had been selected as the Masters International Marathon with international vests from Wales and Northern Ireland also to be seen. Wearing an England Masters vest is usually earned through qualifying races. The representative race for the marathon was previously in the autumn but with this being moved to spring, at Manchester, there wasn’t the opportunity to have as many marathon qualifier races. For a one off time qualification was via a recent marathon time submitted with a link to Power of 10. So for my first England vest I didn’t qualify in the traditional sense, but have since qualified for next year’s representative half marathon via being 3rd F40 at Wilmslow half marathon in March” Kate Waddicor was second F70 in the Masters event despite having recently competed in an ultra event).