On 11th January, I travelled to Texas to run the Houston Marathon. I have never been to Texas, so I was really looking forward to this race, and coming from the UK, I was most looking forward to the warmer weather and the opportunity to get an early-season marathon in the books, whilst most people are just beginning their spring marathon training.

Having just done the 2025 Chicago Marathon in October, I took 3 days off, then went straight into a 12 week training block for Houston. Not ideal, but my training for Chicago was mostly easy runs to build mileage following a 7 and a half month injury layoff, so I figured that 16 week block was a good base build and I would then take these 12 weeks to progress and introduce speed work, etc. There was some logic behind that decision. I ran 3:17 in Chicago, which I was very happy with, but I want to use Houston as a stepping stone to getting back down to sub-3 marathons. My aim here is to run under 3:1,0 taking over 7 mins off Chicago and closer to getting back to where I was.

My travel plans were tight for this weekend. I was flying from Manchester UK, into Houston via Amsterdam on the Friday, arriving at lunchtime to give me time to hit the expo and bib pick up and join Brooks for a shakeout run at 4pm. I will then chill out on the Saturday, run the race Sunday morning and fly back to Manchester Sunday night, arriving home Monday afternoon.

The plan was solid on paper; however, I only managed to get 2 hours of sleep on the Friday night, worrying whether I would be able to make it to Manchester airport due to heavy overnight snow on the forecast. Turned out that we didn’t get that much and I was able to leave home fine and made the flight with no issues. Stress over? Nope, when I checked in at the airport (online check-in was down, thanks KLM), I was informed that I was on standby for the Amsterdam to Houston flight and I would need to see an agent in Amsterdam. Stress levels back up again. I only had a 70min layover in Schipol so I was likely going to be low down on the standby order at that rate.

I ended up not making the planned flight to Houston, and after another hour of waiting around, they booked me onto a flight to Atlanta with a 4 hour wait for the connection to Houston. I ended up landing in Houston at 9:45pm, 8 hours later than planned. I wasn’t able to get the Metro 500 bus from the airport to Downtown which costs $4.25, that stopped running at 8pm. I had to take a taxi costing $62 + tip. At least I was in my hotel room by 10:20pm. Not the best of starts to the weekend.

I was splitting my accommodation for these 2 nights. Friday night, I stayed at the Hilton Americas Houston. This was the race hotel and I saw quite a few pro runners in and around the hotel on the Saturday. For me, the big plus of this hotel was that it is located next to the GRB Convention centre where the expo is located. The hotel is connected via a bridge, so it’s a straight shot from the hotel to the bib pick up. The finish line is also outside the front door. I can highly recommend staying here for ease of logistics if you are staying over after the race.

I then moved to The Sam Houston Hotel for the Saturday night, again, logistics were on my mind when I booked here. This hotel is located right by the start line. The start is roughly 10-15min walk from the bag drop at the GRB on race morning. I figured I would stay closer to the start and avoid the stress of bag drop and walking back down here. I was in Corral A and the entrance to Corral A was literally outside the hotel door, so I waited in the warmth of my room until 6:30am and then waited in the lobby until the corrals closed at 6:40am to stay as warm as possible.

Below is the view from my room at 6am on race day, the corrals are the road to the right with runners warming up on the car park.

Having missed out on bib pick up on Friday (and the Brooks shakeout), I went to the expo Saturday morning. It wasn’t too busy, and bib pickup was very well organised. I was in and out in 5 minutes. The main expo is in a separate hall, so you do have the choice of skipping the crowds and heading back out, but I went in and had a quick look around to kill some time.

After that, I went for a 4 mile shakeout run with 4x 15sec strides at the end around Buffalo Bayou. This was a nice, quiet area to run with no traffic lights or crossings. I then moved to the new hotel in the afternoon, sorted out my gear for race day and grabbed 4 slices of pizza from Franks Pizza for my pre-race dinner.

Houston Marathon 2026 – 3:10:54

With the corral entrance right by the hotel, I was able to stay in bed until 5:30am, had breakfast in the room (porridge oats washed down with Maurten Caf drink), spent 20mins stretching and had a shower before heading down at 6:30am.

I didn’t take any throw away clothes with me, I figured with the race starting at 6:55am and entering the corral at 6:40am I could make do with a plastic poncho to keep some heat in before tossing that on the walk to the start line. It was 3’c for the race start, making this my second coldest marathon behind the 2022 Paris Marathon, the poncho did it’s job but may not have been the best choice had the wait been longer than 15min. Once we got going, I was plenty warm enough.

As we drew near to 6:55am, we moved forward and around the corner to the start line.

My goal today is to run sub 3:10 with the BQ time for my 40-44 AG being 3:15, so that would give me a fairly decent buffer, but more importantly to me, prove to myself that I can still run a BQ time after the injury lay off last year. Whether I make use of that BQ time for the 2027 Boston Marathon or not is a decision for September; today was about proving to myself and giving myself that option to run Boston or not.

 Mile 1 – 7: 7:14, 7:11, 7:06, 7:10, 7:09, 7:06, 6:59

I set off with the 3:10 pace group, knowing that 7:15/mi would be the pace for a 3hr 10min marathon. Starting in the dark was something new for me, certainly in a race, but it was a fun addition to this one. Once we got going,g I soon warmed up and forgot all about the cold shivering in the corral.

The pace felt good and controlled. My heart rate felt like it was under control, not too high. During the last 4 weeks of marathon training before the taper, I had seen higher heart rates across all runs since picking up a cold in early November, and I never really recovered from that. Those high heart rates impacted the longer runs, where I would find myself getting really out of breath around 2 hours into the long run. I put that down to one of two things: the cold or my body being more fatigued than I thought, having jumped straight back into marathon training after the 2025 Chicago Marathon with no recovery time. To try and resolve body of those possible issues, I decided to take a hard taper, really dropping the mileage right back for two weeks and cutting out all cycling, swimming and strength training. I wanted to give the body 2 full weeks to recover going into today’s race.

The evidence from these first 6 miles suggests that it was a sound decision, and it is likely to pay off today, whether that’s with a sub 3:10 or just getting past 2hrs without feeling so out of breath, we’ll see soon enough… well, I already know.

By mile 7 I found myself pulling away from the pace group and made the decision to stick with it and see what’s possible, not going too crazy here but I thought they are running 7:15/mi (which they never did once during the first 6 miles), I had trained at 7:10/mi pace and in my wisdom, thought I could let it rip at 7:05-7:10/mi from 20 miles out.

Mile 8 – 14: 7:05, 7:04, 7:11, 7:07, 7:10, 7:09, 7:08

At just after 8 miles in, this is where the Half Marathon and Marathon runs go their separate ways until the last half a mile. I was expecting most of the runners around me to cut off, and things get really quiet on the marathon route, but it seemed to be the other way around; very few went down the half-marathon route. I was glad for the company. I could still hear the 3:10 pace group behind me and felt like they were breathing down my neck, chasing me. Reality was, I was running away from them a few seconds per mile.

Mile 13 is where the one major hill is on this course, I say major hill very tongue in cheek, its over a bridge but after 13 miles of flat running, that incline was felt and did spike my heart rate more than I would like, it didn’t come back down to the level it was leading into the hill either which was a mistake on my part.

I did seemingly really lock in my pace at mile 13 all the way to mile 19 with 4 miles at 7:08 and 2 miles at 7:09.

Mile 15 – 21: 7:09, 7:08, 7:08, 7:08, 7:11, 7:10, 7:16

As I said, pace was fully locked in starting this block, and I cruised through to mile 19. Mentally, I wasn’t cruising; I was fighting. The legs were starting to ache, well, no shit! You’re 19 miles into a marathon, but my IT band was starting to hurt and feel tight. I was running with a bit of a hobble and definitely favouring my right side. This was something I picked up in training, and did result in 4 long runs being cut short to avoid causing more damage. Well, on race day, there is no cutting it short, so I pushed on.

I was finding it tough going now and was chasing the pace, I would see my pace “drop” to 7:15 at the start of each mile and then spend the rest of that mile chasing it back down to under 7:10 and that was working and is what you do during a race but I still had 10k to go and it wasn’t going to get any easier.

I figured I probably had a minute on the 3:10 pace group by now. I couldn’t hear them behind me, but I didn’t look back. If needs be, I could drop my pace to the same 7:15/mi they would be running at and maintain my lead on my goal time.

Mile 22 – 26.2: 8:03, 7:16, 8:02, 7:27, 7:19, 6:42

Well, that wasn’t the case. In the early part of mile 22, I was again off target but down in the mid 7:20’s, then I heard the 3:10 pace group right behind me. They caught me, I tried to run with them, but they were pulling away, and I couldn’t keep up. I did wonder how they had got me at that point, until now I had hardly dipped anywhere near to the 7:15/mi yet they were off down the road from me. They must have been ahead of schedule, which is great for them, but it broke me mentally.

The aching legs, the IT pain and seeing my 3:10 goal running off down the road was too much; I was mentally tired, and I cracked. I stopped and stood off the course to massage the IT band. I took a minute to do that and set off running again. I never thought about stopping until then; it just happened, but getting back to running again, I was hobbling more for the first 10-20 strides, but got back to a more normal hobble. I think that massaging did help a little, but it was only a short-term fix.

I was back around 3:10 pace in mile 2,3 but then stopped again in mile 24, same massaging and hobbling around when getting running again, but this time I wasn’t getting back on pace, and I had accepted that, I thought if I end up chasing it, I will only end up stopping again a mile down the road like last time.

I ran miles 25 and 26 at what felt manageable without totally losing sight of my BQ goal. A little pick up of the pace over the final 0.2 mile into the finish, no doubt brought me home under 3:11, which I felt proud of. I managed to push the pain to one side and chased my goal as best I could.

Brief roundup:

I finished up 54 seconds off my goal of running a sub 3:10 marathon, but this is the fastest marathon I have run since collapsing in the 2024 Boston Marathon and 6:42 faster than the Chicago Marathon 13 weeks ago, which is progress in the right direction. I made the choice to roll the dice early on and tried to run as far under 3:10 as I could, and in hindsight, that didn’t pay off this time. If my IT band had held up and if I hadn’t spiked my heart rate so much on the hill,l then maybe it might have paid off, but it’s if’s and but’s. What happened, happened, and I feel good for trying.

The comeback from the achilles injury is continuing. I have taken another 6:42 off my marathon time on the road back to a sub-3 marathon. I wanted to test myself and see if I could run a BQ, with the qualifying time at 3:15 for my age group (assuming it remains the same after the 2026 Boston Marathon), and I did it. I ran a BQ and gave myself a 4min 6sec buffer, which I think would be very tight if I did decide to apply for the 2027 Boston Marathon. Regardless, I wanted to see if I could, and I went and did it, first time of asking.

Thoughts on the Houston Marathon, I loved it. The course is very flat and fast, the roads are wide, and the number of people running is far fewer than in the World Marathon Majors; we had plenty of space to run our own pace. On-course aid stations were spot on, every mile from mile 2. The crowds were a lot less than the majors, too, but still quite a lot out there, they said to expect around 250k spectators. The weather was perfect this year too, around 3 °C – 10 °C during the marathon with little wind and no rain. If you are looking for a good early season fast marathon, give Houston a try, just bare in mind, with the race being the second Sunday of January, your peak training week will fall on Christmas week, that made things tricky for me fitting in the training, more so with it being school half term and having to entertain a 10yr old all day and run at night… first world problems right?