I finally broke 3 hours!

Breaking three hours for the marathon has been an elusive goal of mine for a few years. My previous marathon PB came at Sydney in 2023, when race day turned out to be brutally hot — around 33–35°C. I ran 3:02, which I was really proud of given the conditions, but it also left me wondering what might have been. The sub-three goal was definitely still there.

Coming back to Sydney in 2026, I decided to have another proper crack at it and used the Streek marathon program as the backbone of my 16-week preparation. It wasn’t a perfect build. I lost around two weeks through illness and a planned medical procedure, and I was also managing a niggling plantar plate tear under the second toe of my left foot. That became a persistent problem throughout the program. I could often train through it, but I’d pull up extremely tender and sore afterwards. That made judging my actual marathon fitness difficult. I felt like I had the aerobic capacity to run the pace I wanted, but the foot often prevented me from extracting that pace from my training sessions. I had to become comfortable with running some sessions a little slower than planned and, at times, finishing them in quite a lot of pain. Despite that, there were some really encouraging signs.

I could feel my aerobic capacity steadily improving throughout the program, eventually reaching a Garmin VO2 Max of 60 for the first time with only a couple of weeks to go.

The marathon-pace sections within the long runs were also a huge confidence boost. I didn’t always nail the target pace, particularly when running on tired legs and dealing with the foot, but they were heading in the right direction. By the end of the build I was confident I’d done the work. I believed I could run sub-three pace; what I didn’t know was whether I could hold it for 42.2 km.

Looking back, the recovery weeks and taper worked particularly well for me. I felt like the program gave me enough stimulus to keep building my aerobic capacity without simply breaking my body down in the process. Despite the interruptions and injury, I arrived at race week feeling fit and ready to give the goal a genuine shot. My pacing plan wasn’t overly complicated. I had 4:10–4:15/km in my head and wanted to see how the body responded. The opening kilometres of Sydney have plenty of downhill running, so running slightly quicker initially came quite easily. I probably paid for some of that around the 12–15 km mark when we started climbing through the city, but I settled back into the race.

The atmosphere around the course was fantastic. Having my family out there cheering me on was a massive lift, and the musicians, DJs, choirs and crowds around Sydney kept the energy going when things started getting difficult. Centennial Park was one of those difficult patches. The small rolling hills were beginning to hurt, but when I tried to lift the pace I was really encouraged that my body responded. That gave me confidence that the race was still there. By the final few kilometres I knew I was somewhere around the three-hour mark. I allowed myself to settle through the Mrs Macquarie’s Chair section, but coming down Macquarie Street I suddenly realised there was a chance I could miss the target. So I went for it. I lifted the pace, pushed hard through the final section and crossed the finish line with an official time of 2:58:56.

Finally, sub-three. Probably the biggest thing I took from the Streek program was that I didn’t need a perfect training block to arrive at the start line ready. I missed training, dealt with an injury and didn’t hit every target pace. But the structure, recovery weeks, long runs and marathon-pace sessions progressively built the fitness I needed. By race day I’d accumulated enough evidence to believe the ability was there. I just had to trust the work, accept the uncertainty and race.

Thanks for putting together such a practical and well-balanced program. It helped me achieve a goal I’d been chasing for several years, and I’m incredibly proud to have finally got there.

Cheers, Anthony