<4 Steve, on his way to running a new vet masters world record for the fastest 10 marathons in 10 days.

of Indian ancestry, Sy Mah, who had completed 500 marathons in an average time of between 3:40 and four hours.

“T felt this was something I could potentially achieve, something for me in my world. It wouldn’t be just about running numerous marathons but running them in reasonable times, digging deep every race, no matter how I felt. That would be the real challenge,” Steve said.

That was back in 1988. At that time, Steve had run 12 marathons with just six under 3:30, but from 1988 he averaged 23 a year, most of them meeting his target.

Some say that Steve is lucky to have been able to run so many high-quality marathons without injury or illness interrupting him, and to a certain extent Steve would agree with that. However, he has never left his desire to become the first man in the world to run 500 sub-3:30 marathons down to chance. He has studied and takes very seriously daily and race-day nutrition, he has a bin in his garden in which he takes an ice bath after every race, and he heeds the advice of his physiotherapist and masseur. For Steve is a man given to detail: everything is studied, questioned, and checked several times before he will accept and adopt it. He may well be an amateur in that he is not paid for running marathons, but in every other sense Steve Edwards is a true professional.

Six days before the world record

Six days before his world-record attempt, I spoke to Steve over the phone to find out how he was feeling.

“T’ve been feeling coldy since yesterday,” he said, sounding slightly nervous, “but I went for a five-mile run today and felt OK once I was outside in the fresh air. The sun was shining and I was thinking how nice it would be if it’s like this on Sunday. I keep trying to visualize the finish and how it will feel. I’m already feeling emotional at the thought. I just want to get that first mile under my belt

and know that everything’s OK. Other people have said to me that it’s just another one, but it’s not. There’s a certain magic about putting a date in the diary and landing on it. I’ve had 24 years of tapering!” he jokes.

“The thing I worry about most is the thought of ‘What after?’ When I reached my 500th, it was great on the day; then I went back to work on Tuesday and everything was normal again. I was quite upset about it and spoke to someone at my running club, and he said, ‘Well, what did you expect to happen?’

“T like the idea of setting a benchmark. I hope it will inspire someone else to have a go at beating it, like I did when I read about Sy Mah.

“T enjoy giving inspirational motivational talks. To try and make the audience

appreciate how far a marathon is, I name a local point one mile from where they are so they can imagine that distance and then tell them to multiply that by 26 or to think of somewhere that is 26 miles away from where we are.

“You never know what’s going to happen from one run to the next. I suppose I’ve been lucky with injuries, illness, and life generally not preventing me from continuing.

“Tt’s the mind-set to keep on with it more than anything else. This year has been the most difficult. I’ve had an injury that put me out of a couple of races, but that may have been a good thing as it’s kept me steady and made me change the

date to later in the year, nearer my 50th birthday! And now it will be at a smaller, friendlier event, which I prefer anyway as a general rule.”

World-record day

And so it is that on November 11, 2012, Steve Edwards lines up at the start of the little-known Enigma Fox @ 40 Marathon event with just 65 others. The race, organized by Steve’s good friend and fellow 100 Marathon Club member Dave “Foxy” Bayley, takes in 7.5 laps of the picturesque Caldecotte Lake, Milton Keynes, a town just 45 miles northwest of London, erected in the late ’60s to relieve the city’s housing congestion and which is better known for its concrete cows than it is for the setting of world records.

On this day, though, it’s as though the town is aware that it’s about to play host to something rather special, for it has laid on one of those most glorious of English autumn days where the sky is a pure, uninterrupted expanse of blue and the sun a faultless, round-yellow disc from a child’s painting, rusting the amber-gold and ruby leaves of the surrounding woodland. The only movement from the lazy, flat lake is the twinkling wink of its diamond eyes or the occasional frenzy of a clumsily landing swan. You cannot get a more perfect day in England in November.

Three hours, 14 minutes and 17 seconds later, 49-year-old Steve Edwards rounds the final bend, takes his 4-year-old grandson’s hand, and breaks the kitchen-roll finish tape with consummate ease, setting a world record for running 500 marathons in the fastest average finish time—3:15:12. It has taken 24 years of blood, sweat, toil, and tears and the devotion and support of his wife, Teresa, to achieve. The record is likely to outlive Steve and possibly his grandchild, too.

And there is nota TV camera or national newspaper reporter in sight. The decision to set his world record at a good running friend’s low-key event in a beautiful setting in the company of good friends and close family rather than at a highly populated, TV-sponsored event with world-press coverage probably best sums up the man who is Steve Edwards. He is | a husband, a father, a grandfather; he gave

Steve with his number one supporter—
his wife, Teresa—moments after setting the
initial world record for
the fastest 10 marathons in 10 days.

© Martin Campbell

is three grandchildren special medals for them to wear on the day so they would feel included and involved.

As he crosses the line, a spinning medal placed around his neck, he sinks to is knees, spreads his arms wide, and bows his head. He is joined by Teresa, who takes his head in her hands and gathers him to her. For a moment they may be alone in the world, no doubt trying to take in and wanting to capture to memory the moment when Steve Edwards became the only man in the world ever to have run 500 sub-3:30 marathons.

But those who have traveled to support him are having none of it. Soon champagne corks are popping, congratulations are offered, hands are shaken, cheeks are kissed in a whirl of joy, friendship, and shared wonder and pride at knowing such a man. In true English-gent style, Steve accepts it all with a gracious smile, anod of his head, and a twinkle of his blue eyes and asks other runners who have finished how their races went, cheering those who are still running—and there are plenty of them, as Steve finished in third place.

For me, watching from the sidelines, it’s like taking a step back in time to see a man behave with such quiet grace and dignity when achieving something so great. There is no leaping about or shouting, more a quiet pleasure and acceptance that something he has worked so hard for, for so long, has finally come to fruition.