COTSWOLD athlete Steve Edwards last weekend became the first person in the world to run a landmark 800 official marathon races all under 3hrs 30min.

The 59 year old endurance runner from Longborough (Nr Moreton in Marsh) ran in the Phoenix event at Walton on Thames clocking a time of 3:28:09 which was also good enough to win the race from just over 100 other runners taking part.

This was Edwards' 911th marathon in total as he continues his quest for the ultimate marathon world record of running 1000 official marathon races averaging under 3hrs 30min which no-body in the world has yet managed to achieve.

Commenting after the race on Saturday, Edwards said;

"The last 15 or so months have been very difficult for many people with the lockdowns and motivation has at times been difficult.

"I certainly found it hard to keep the routine going, especially the training with the not knowing when things would get back to some kind of normality again. I just tried taking it a day at a time, get through each training session and just wait for races to be held again.

"Fortunately, my first race back after 5 months went well, I managed 3:27, that was a week ago and knowing I just needed one more under the 3:30 for this new record landmark gave me the motivation to push that little bit harder.

"Whether I can squeeze out any more under 3:30 is another question though!"

Edwards' marathon running career spans nearly 40 years and he's averaged a marathon every 13 days for the last 33 years.

With 89 more official marathons required for the 1000 marathons record, it's not imperative that Edwards needs to run them all under 3hrs 30min, his current average time for 911 marathons is just over 3hrs 19min so he has plenty of leeway to meet the sub 3hrs 30min average.

But ongoing injury niggles from all the years of competitive running are always on his mind and he readily admits that he will need a bit of luck if he wants to achieve this mammoth record goal.