175 marathons and counting Mary Lou Burge

175 marathons and counting

For most of us the idea of taking part in a marathon would involve months of training, days of sore muscles post-event, and probably a vow to never do it again! Not Alice Robinson StA'15, who took part in her first marathon in June 2019 having entered on the day itself, with no prior training, and ending up finishing as the first senior female. Since then, Alice has gone on to run a staggering 175 marathons and counting.

I caught up with Alice in October on a rare ‘rest’ day to try and understand what keeps her going. “I just love it” she says, “I sometimes wake up in the morning and think I might not enjoy this one, but I always do”. She does in fact regularly do 4 marathons over one weekend, often finding the afternoon run “much easier” after the morning warm-up!

Her schedule sounds utterly exhausting. In May she completed a 20 in 20, but actually ran 23 marathons in 23 days as she added a couple of races on the end. She then ran the Great Barrow Challenge of 10 marathons in 10 days in June and completed her 99th and 100th (in Harlow & Staines) one Sunday in August. Her first city marathon was Brighton in September and since then she has done such wonderfully-named challenges as the Yorkshire Cakeathon and Cookiethon and the Samphire Hoe Zombie Challenge.

Alice could have achieved several Guinness World Records, including the youngest person to do 20 marathons in 20 days, which she has in fact done twice, although she hasn’t claimed them as the “paperwork would take too long”.

I wondered if she had suffered any injuries during her short running career, but apart from breaking her collar bone falling out of her attic which put back her running by a few weeks, and the odd bit of knee pain, she has hardly pulled a muscle.

One of Alice’s double marathon days Alice gets much pleasure being part of the running community

Just one of Alice’s many marathons, this one in Cornwall

The reason we race isn’t so much to beat each other, but to be with each other.

Christopher McDougall, Author of Born to Run

After leaving Worth Alice started a Biomedical Science degree at Plymouth University but deferred her final year to concentrate on her running. She hopes to eventually do a Masters in Sports Psychology, possibly via the Open University, and has certainly learnt a lot about the subject during her runs. She says her other main motivation is the marathon community, having met a lot of other regular runners and she has become a well-known figure on the marathon circuit, often spurred on with shouts of “come on Alice” from familiar faces.

When she’s not running Alice fills her time with care work, including live-in respite care, and doing the odd promotional and admin jobs, really just to pay for her marathon entries and travel.

Alice’s latest goal is to reach 200 marathons within 52 weeks, hopefully by May 2022, before heading for the World Ranking List, and perhaps to improve on her already impressive best time of 3 hours, 6 minutes. Some achievement for a Worth girl who “wasn't particularly sporty at school. Only playing netball and popping to the gym a few times”.

Mary Lou Burge, Worth Society Manager