Andrew Colley has run career-best performances at every distance from 5k to the half marathon over the last 12 months. Last weekend he added the marathon to his list with a 2:09:46, 5th place performance in Prague.
Andrew entered the race with a personal best of 2:11:22 from the 2023 Chicago Marathon, but had only seen marginal improvement over the previous 4 years. Andrew’s jump to 2:09 was reminiscent of his 1:00:47 half marathon performance in Houston this January that vaulted him up to 8th on the All-Time US list. He also joins teammate, Ryan Ford as a sub-2:10 marathon, after Ryan’s 2:08 run in Boston.
Andrew chose Prague primarily due to the timing after the US Half Marathon Championships in early March. He wanted to target a flatter, quicker course and have the the time to properly target both Atlanta and a spring marathon. The race runs primarily along the river and includes many gentle uphills and downhills beneath bridges, but has roughly half the elevation gain as Boston and 1/3 of the downhill.
The race had organized 2 pace groups, a 2:05 group and 2:07 group. Andrew opted to run with the 2:07 pacer, scheduled to run through 25-30k. As it worked out, the 2:05 group went through the halfway mark at 2:07 pace so there was a large group of 10 athletes together through halfway, which Andrew passed in 1:03:29 feeling relaxed and confident.
Just past halfway the lead pacers realized their mistake and accelerated, breaking up the large lead pack. By the time the dust settled at 25k, Andrew found himself in 6th place and the only athlete remaining with the 2:07 pacemaker. Then, aided by a slight tailwind, the pacemaker began to speed up. Andrew laid off slightly, maintaining contact but letting him drift slightly ahead. By the turn at the bottom of the course Andrew had found himself running in the low 4:40 per mile pace, well beyond the low 4:50’s they had been running.
Being laser-focused on locking into the pacer, he hadn’t realized he was clipping off paces quite that quick. At 27.5k the course he heads back upriver, and into a headwind. By that point the pacer dropped off and he was racing on his own. The quicker rhythm the pacer left him with carried him through 30k before he began to slow. His 25-30k split was 14:37, 4:43 mile pace (2:03:30 marathon pace). Andrew had moved up into 5th place and by 32k was closing rapidly on the 3rd and 4th place finishers. He would go on to catch one of those athletes and come within seconds of another. But has he slowed over the final 10k of the race he was passed by eventual 3rd place finisher, Tetsuya Yoroizaka of Japan.
Over the final miles of the race nearly the entire field was slowed by the stiffening headwind. Andrew fought all the way to the line, finishing just 36 seconds off the podium and running a personal best by 1:36. Andrew left the race with a tinge of disappoint at having slowed over the final miles and narrowly missing a podium finish. However, the race represented an emphatic return to the distance, a huge personal best, and a 5th place finish in a field where the 5th fastest seed was 2:05. Andrew is eager to recover well from this and build on his stellar performance.
View full results here and watch a full replay of the race below: