Who Is Phil Sesemann?

Two Olympic Marathon Runners (and me)

Valencia Marathon, 2023, Phil Sesemann is in the shape of his life, and aiming to run the Olympic Qualifying Standard, for Paris 2024. The weather is perfect, the course fast, and the field loaded with talent. The time needed is an eye watering 2:08:10. I love how they threw that extra 10 seconds in there.

Phil is running smoothly, in control, with a big group of elite athletes. Around the 30km mark, the pace maker has dropped, the pace has slowed, the pack splits, and he can’t go with it. Hamstrings and calves are cramping. The guys who disappear up the road make the Standard, but Phil falls agonisingly short. A lifetime best of 2:08:48, but 38 seconds away from glory.

Later in the day, whilst the rest of us are out celebrating, with warm Spanish sun and cold Spanish beer, Phil is tucked away for an early night. He is already preparing for plan B.

He knew if he didn’t make the cut this time, 10 weeks later he would attack again in Seville Marathon.

Most people take months to recover from a road marathon of such ferocity. Many of the best athletes in the world only race two marathons a year. Such is the toll on body and mind.

Phil allows himself one easy week, before launching straight back into full training.

With winter in full swing back home in Leeds, he decides to travel to Iten, Kenya, for the toughest training camp he can conjure for himself.

Iten is a hard place just to exist in. The altitude is so high, getting out of your seat is hard. Slightly too fast, and you will get a dizzying head rush. Sitting back down is hard too. You find yourself gasping for breath and you haven’t even done anything.

Out on the roads, the red dust whips up whenever a car hurtles past (they always hurtle in Kenya) and chokes you. Every path is hilly, broken, and with the added fun of relentless sun, beating down on you, all day.

When you get back from your run to relax, even then, there is no respite. The beds are tough, the meat is tough, even the donuts are tough (and triangle shaped, just to piss you off).

But Phil knows that tough is what he needs most right now. Every day counts, and he wants to put himself through hell, to somehow find those 38 seconds. He has come to the right place.

Science goes out the window. No heart rate, lactate threshold or VO2max. He gets into a group of marathoners who have run 2:05, 2:06, 2:07, and he practises the old fashioned art of hanging on for dear life. He gets dropped every time. Nowhere near the marathon pace he needs.

The days in between sessions, the ‘easy’ days, are actually the hardest. At least with the hard days, you have the adrenaline, and are too busy dying to think things through.

As he starts on his easy runs, there is too much time in his own head. Uphill from his house, the first mile is the hardest, barely running 10 minutes a mile. Everything aches. Nothing is coming easy. Is this too much? Is this even working?

He misses home badly. Misses his partner Jess, and his dogs. But there’s no time to back out now.

He has to be aggressive, has to take risks. This has to work. So he heaves himself out of bed every morning, tries to rub life into his eyes, his sore back. Claps the dust off his shoes, and stumbles out in the darkness, before dawn, to meet that group of smiling assassins, who shake your hand, then tear your lungs out.

One hundred and thirty miles a week. Every week.

The ten weeks take forever. And they fly by.

Suddenly, it is February 2024, Phil is on Seville start line, staring down at his brilliant white shoes. They’ve never been worn before. So light, they can only be worn for one marathon. He doesn’t even wear socks. Every measure is taken. There is nothing past the finish line. This is the last chance.

Again, good weather, fast course, loaded field. Again, Phil gets in a good group and is running smart. Just off the front of the pack, so he can get the wind break and psychological benefit of drafting, rather than leading. But near enough to the front so that he can spot his drink bottles, and shout at the pace maker to cut the tangents, and hurry up if the pace drops.

Just like before, at around 30k, the pacemaker drops out, the rhythm snaps, and one group breaks away. But this time Phil is ready. He has seen this before, knows that it all comes down to this moment. His legs are shaking, his arms are working, he has to find a way to cover this move. Otherwise it was all for nothing. This is now or never time.

How much fitter can you actually get in 10 weeks? Is it the body you are training? Or the mind? He keeps telling himself, the long runs in Kenya hurt more than this. He is willing himself through more pain than ever before.

Somehow he is clinging on. One kilometer closer to immortality. As he draws near 40k, with just 2k remaining, he frantically tries to work out the maths. At this point, 1+1 becomes confusing, he is convinced he hasn’t done enough. He is going to miss the Standard. But he doesn’t stop trying. Everything is ugly now, the white shoes are brown red with blood, literally screaming at himself to find something more.

Coming down the finishing stretch, the clock is glitching. On. Off.

He sees 2:07:50.

Then it freezes.

He fights to the line with every bit of the nothing he has left.

Just as he crosses the line, the clock flashes up again.

2:08:04

He has done it.

Phil Sesemann is going to the Olympics.

Every athlete’s journey to the Olympics is special. But, as soon as you start adding equipment, facilities and rules to a sport, you eliminate potential challengers. Can you think of a more simple event in the Olympics than the marathon?

Which is why it is the hardest, most competitive event in the Olympics.

I have met a lot of Olympians, when there are no cameras and no one is watching. Some are decent. Most are dicks. Maybe I would be a dick too if I spent my whole childhood winning everything.

Maybe that is why Phil is the kindest, nicest guy on the circuit, always happy to give you the time of day, take a selfie, talk about his dogs, because, like you and me, he did not spend his childhood winning everything either.

This was not preordained. It was not God given talent. Phil was not inevitably destined toward this. Nice guys finish last.

I don’t know if anyone was thinking Phil would make the Olympics. I don’t know if Phil was thinking it either. An excellent runner, sure. But everyone is excellent at that level. The world is full of excellent runners. Phil likes to point to the time he came 4th in the English Schools Cross Country as a junior. A good result. But I also remember a race, a few years later, when he went off like a turkey and ended up way down in 122nd.

It’s precisely because Phil was finishing races in 122nd place, because he had to wait until he was 26 years old before he got his first GB vest, because he had to deal with years of injuries with no running at all, that I want to share his story. The humanness of it that I’m trying to get across. Sometimes, when I hear Olympians say: ‘If I can do it, anyone can’, I think, bullshit. I remember how insanely gifted they were as kids, as soon as they stepped foot on a track.

When Phil says stuff, I listen.

Phil started out at 800m, then 1500m, then 3000m indoor, even tried Triathlon. Nothing was quite working. He qualified as a doctor and had a promising career in medicine ahead of him. Questions were being asked of his time spent training and racing. Is this really for you? And, as he got into his mid twenties, with not much to show for it, the voices got louder. He could easily have quit. With incredible support from Jess, and coach, Hendo, he kept searching, kept adjusting, until he found a way to make it in this sport.

It was hard work, but also intelligent, adaptive work, over months and years, that got him within 38 seconds. And even then, he had to be brave, and take a massive gamble that could well have backfired, to get over the line.

Last year, 2023, he averaged over 100 miles a week, for every week of the year. Try to run 100 miles in one week, for just one week, at whatever pace you want, and you’ll get a glimpse of the amount of work it requires. You may find it impossible to remember how to use the toaster. And the microwaver? The microfavre? The microway?

So what do you do, when your friend is faster, younger, more intelligent, better looking, works harder, is generally a nicer guy, and has stolen your dream whilst heading for immortality?

Well, obviously you write a blog about how amazing he is and ask everyone you know to tune in to watch.

Sat 10th, 7am UK time, BBC1 and iPlayer.

It will be an incredibly exciting race. Hot, hilly, humid. The fastest in the world will be there, including the two greatest of all time, Kipchoge and Bekele. With a course and conditions like this, anything can happen.

And me? I am currently cycling from London to Paris to scream my head off and cheer him on as loud as my inferior lungs will let me.

I haven’t been on a bike in about 10 years. I don’t know what the fuck possessed me. I hate bikes.

But I’ll be cycling, with Phil’s brother, Rob, and friends, 170 miles, just to witness, with my own eyes, someone running a race they have already won.