A Plaistow man came close to breaking the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon dressed as an astronaut. Phillip Minns ran this year’s London Marathon to raise money for the NSPCC, and finished in 3 hours 24 minutes, only 17 minutes outside the record of 3 hours 7.
“It was disappointing,” Phill told me. “There was two people going for the same record, so it was always going to be a race from the start to the end …”
When he realized he was not going to neat the record he told me he started “high fiving people and just having fun in general”.
This was Phill’s 12th and last ever marathon. Not running it again will be like “losing a close friend.” But given that he trained constantly and it took over his life, Phill said that he will also be a relief.
Phill said he only started running in the first place after giving up smoking, but that although he then “got a bug for it” he never expected he would end up running marathons.
From now on Phill plans to pass his knowledge and experience onto other marathon runners by becoming a coach.
His advice for anyone else thinking about taking part in marathon is to never train alone, and to finish always, even if it takes twelve hours, because it’s the sense of accomplishment you get by running the whole course that will keep mean you don’t stop training.
You can sponsor Phill on justgiving.com/final where he has already raised almost £2000 for the NSPCC.