The London Marathon is a voyage into the unknown for Olympic triathlon champion Alex Yee as he works towards a lifetime ambition of running in the iconic race.
And while the Brit knows he’s up against it in terms of trying to match the times at the head of the men’s field in what is his 26.2-mile debut, he hopes his “unique” preparation may set a “gold standard” for the future.
For the vast majority of top-end marathon runners, volume is key – with 100-mile plus weeks commonplace.
However after years of working hard on his swim and bike skills to get them up to his run level, Yee was never going to just drop those first two disciplines of triathlon, even for six months.
And as he and his award-winning coach Adam Elliott explain in a fascinating first episode in a four-part ‘The London Detour’ series on his new YouTube channel, which is embedded below and absolutely worth a watch, it’s all about finding the right balance for first London and then defending his Olympic title at LA2028.
‘Fact-finding mission’
Yee has set himself a target time of between 2:07 and 2:10 on what is his marathon debut and early in the video admits that even in a half marathon, if new world record holder Jacob Kiplimo is running 56:42 “then even if I had a really good day, I would be three-and-a-half, four minutes behind them.”
Yee’s forte to this point in running terms has been 10k – he’s still never run further in a race on the road – and he was the British 10,000m champion on the track before he switched to swim, bike and run.
So to step up from 10k to more than four times that distance is a significant challenge and he explains: “The way I’m doing things is most probably unique in terms of the way most other people would prepare for a marathon.
“It’s un-nerving but also really exciting that we’re on this fact-finding mission to find out what we can about whether this is possible.
“And you never know, this could become a gold standard for specific people or a person who may not be able to do high mileage.”
‘I’ve never done this run volume’
In practical terms, coach Elliott reveals that early in the marathon block: “It’s probably around 70-75 miles a week and we’ll see how we go but we will probably get up to 80-90 miles in big weeks.
“But that’s still holding a volume of swimming and biking and we’ll probably top up on the easier aerobic stuff. Because it’s something a bit new, we’re just going to see how Alex handles it.”
To add detail to that, Yee has been doing around five hours of swimming a week and nine hours on the bike alongside that run mileage and what is crystal clear from the video is that Yee is relishing the build into London, even if it hasn’t always been smooth.
He explains: “I am enjoying the process so far. There have been challenges – unfortunately I had two bouts of illness and I had to pull out of the Barcelona Half which was a shame.
“There have definitely been hiccups but I’ve been very fortunate to have had few of those in triathlon over the last four years which only goes to show the differences and the changes of what I’m doing.
“I’ve never done the run volume I am doing at the moment, never done it at the speeds I’m doing. I’ve never done the length of workouts, I’ve never run a race over 10k, so it’s all pretty exciting and new, but I’m embracing that.”
Yee has already taken the opportunity to seize his chance of running in the London Marathon, exactly a decade on from his last Mini Marathon appearance for his local borough, and the sporting adventure will come full circle on April 27th.
