Magic Mike sets new M70 London Marathon record
Veteran Newbury Athletic Club runner Mike Sheridan set a new British M70 age-group record at the London Marathon.
The 73-year-old completed the 26.2 miles in a chip time of 2:59.13, winning the M70 race by a quarter-of-an-hour and breaking the record that had stood since 1996.
The record has in fact been a long time in the making and Sheridan thought he had it in 2021, only for it to be denied him after his gun time was used in favour of his faster chip time.
“I’ve been working a long time for it,” he said.
“I thought I had it in 2012 but that didn’t get through the gate.
“This time, the committee actually contacted me before I’d finished filling my form in.
“It’s been a long trail, so to get there is great.”
Sheridan’s always been athletic and physically fit but only started taking running seriously in 2010.
Prior to that, his favoured form of fitness was mountain biking in the hills around his Highclere home – and it wasn’t until his son challenged him to a half marathon that he swapped pedals for pavements.
He said: “My son challenged me to a half marathon with about six months notice.
“I was looking for something different and so I just started running.
“I ran that first one in 2010 in a fraction under 1:40 and just kept on running.
“My first full marathon was London 2012, and that one I ran in 3:32.”
From then, Sheridan began thinking about age-group rankings after a club member mentioned it to him.
“I went and had a look and I found myself at number 175 for people in my age category,” he said.
“I thought, ‘I’ve never come 175th in something in my life, that’s appalling.’”
“I quickly worked out the pattern to improve my ranking, and that was basically to focus on a race and run it hard.
“Each time I did that I was going up the stepladder and getting better at running and then I started thinking about records.”
Sheridan started out running with Team Kennet before switching to Newbury AC and completed the marathon in the club’s blue and red colours.
He said: “I ran my first sub-three hour marathon with Team Kennet in Berlin in 2014, and I’ve now run sub-three six times.
“Both clubs are great, I joined Newbury in 2015 and I love it.”
The first half of the London course tends to be slower than the last 13 miles and Sheridan admits, with the rain lashing down around the eight mile mark, he went through a wobble and even considered slowing his pace.
“The roads are very narrow on mile eight and were soaking wet,” he said.
“There were puddles everywhere and runners were pretty packed together, it was chaos.
“I’m a rhythm runner and I just couldn’t find my rhythm, we had another heavy downpour and it just felt like one of those days.
“A Newbury runner went past me and disappeared off into the horizon and I was thinking that I might just jog in.
“I had to grind it out and I knew that, if I gave in, I’d have regretted it for the rest of my life.
“I got to halfway and the weather had improved, the crowd of runners had thinned out and I just went for it.”
Sheridan was lifted by the support of the London crowd as well as his children and wife.
He said: “The crowd lifts you all the way.
“People have made a lot of sacrifices for me, my long-suffering wife would like to go and put her feet up in the sun, but instead she’s had to put up with me running – thankfully this time it was worth it.”
