Former IRONMAN World Champion and last year’s Challenge Roth winner Sam Laidlow had hoped to kick off his 2026 season with a strong performance at the Barcelona Marathon on Sunday.
As the running times get quicker and quicker in middle and full-distance triathlon, the Frenchman had given himself a ‘running goal’ to ‘maybe bring me some confidence to know that I can run fast’.
He is actually one of the quicker marathon runners in swim, bike and run terms – and getting faster, with his best three times coming last season with a 2:37:19 at Roth, a 2:41:15 at IRONMAN Leeds, and a 2:42:23 at the IRONMAN World Champs in Nice.
So all eyes were on him to see just how fast he could go without the need to swim 3.9km and ride 180km beforehand before pulling on his carbon-plated shoes.
‘Fighting massive cramps’
He’d teased in an Instagram video that he had three options for his Barcelona gameplan – run at 2:20 pace for as long as possible and accept he’d “blow up” at some point, try and run an easy sub-2:30 – or find some middle ground between those first two choices.
Not surprisingly most of his followers and plenty of fellow pro athletes suggested the ‘all in’ approach!
An evenly-paced 2:20 means 10km splits of around 33:10 and he was a little down on that with a 33:48 for his first 10km around the streets of the Catalan capital.
Unfortunately he didn’t make it to the next checkpoint at 15km, posting later on Instagram: “Had to call it a day after 14k only… Fighting massive cramps pretty much from the start. Still not a runner 🙃.”
The men’s race was won by Uganda’s Abel Chelangat in 2:04:57 while Fotyen Tesfay clocked the second-fastest time in women’s marathon history – click here for full details.
Back to swim, bike and run
Laidlow had endured something of a troubled build-up into the race, revealing: “Everything was going real nice up until 3 weeks ago, when a virus hit our whole little training squad.
“Have been struggling with some foot pain ever since and have had to drastically reduce the volume. But nonetheless, I’m excited to see the Hoka family and get a big run in the legs.”
He’ll now re-focus on the triathlon season, with that Challenge Roth defence and then the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona two huge targets.
In terms of the best marathon times at the end of a full-distance race, last year saw the 2:30 mark broken for the first time by Manoel Messias at IRONMAN Brazil with a 2:26:50.
Matt Hanson followed that with 2:28:03 at Challenge Roth and perhaps most impressive of all was Casper Stornes’ 2:29:25 when winning the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice as Laidlow was fifth.
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And in terms of standalone marathons no one has come close to Olympic champion Alex Yee’s sensational 2:06:38 in Valencia late last year, the second-fastest ever time by a Briton behind only Sir Mo Farah.
