If the predictions are even in the right ballpark then Olympic triathlon champion Alex Yee and recent training partner Phil Sesemann have a real opportunity at the Valencia Marathon on December 7 to move up to second on the all-time list of the quickest British men over the distance.
Top spot is Sir Mo Farah’s British record of 2:05:11 at the Chicago Marathon in 2018, with the next best being Emile Cairess’ 2:06:46 at the London Marathon last year.
Yee and Sesemann, one of Britain’s very best over 26.2 miles, have been training together in Yorkshire recently and as anyone who has been watching the videos on YouTube (see below for the latest one) can confirm, they’ve both been putting in the hard yards while making running very fast look ridiculously smooth and easy.
Amsterdam ‘warm up’
The first big pointer came from Sesemann who took in the Amsterdam Marathon in October en route to Valencia and set a new PB of 2:07:17 with a perfectly-paced race.
And afterwards he hinted at more to come, saying: “Onwards to Valencia in 7 weeks where I’ll play it a little less safe.”
Yee is the fastest male runner in triathlon and has taken the opportunity this season – after winning Olympic gold in Paris – to fulfil a lifetime’s ambition by running in the London Marathon.
And what a debut that was as he finished a superb 14th there in a time of 2:11:08 despite unusually hot temperatures.
But the former British 10,000m champion on the track clearly feels he can go quicker still as he’s elected to round off his year with a second marathon in Valencia before re-focussing on swim, bike and run.
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Predictions, predictions
And he shared a photo from his COROS watch on Instagram this week which showed his current predicted time for the most popular race distances – and it was eye-catching to say the least.
Of course they are only predicted times and can be impacted by all sorts of factors on the day but they certainly ring true at the shorter end of the distance spectrum and are based on huge amounts of his data.
Yee said: “Maranoia is on my mind but i’m excited to have one last go at the marathon distance. With the experience of London, my biggest run block (5 weeks over 100miles!) and the new COROS PACE 4 on the wrist, let’s see what can happen València.. VAMOS”
His 5K ‘race predictor’ is 13:37 and his PB on the road is 13:26 from the Podium 5K in Barrowford in 2020 while he also ran a 13:13 5,000m on the track in Belgium in August this year.
His 10K prediction is 28:01, again very close to his quickest road time (28:05) which came in Valencia ahead of London this year.
The half marathon comes in at 1:01:01 so a bit quicker than his 1:01:29 in the Valencia half marathon last month but as he said at the time, conditions weren’t ideal and he was hoping for sub-61.
All of which brings us to the potential marathon time. There have been hints that 2:07 was the target time but the COROS suggests even quicker than that – 2:05:46.
That would leave just Sir Mo ahead of him in the British list – unless Sesemann can go even faster!
It’s going to be fascinating to watch and we’ll be covering the event in detail here on RUN247.
