Marathon man enjoys reaching milestone
ASALTASH runner has finished his 100th marathon – a full 25 years after he ran his first, becoming the first person from his club to reach the milestone.
Colin Bunting has been a member of Tamar Trotters since the club was founded 1996 and ran his first marathon in New York in 1997 with his wife, Maggie. He has now joined the prestigious 100 Marathon Club after completing the monstrous Cornish Marathon on Sunday, November 6.
Now 56, Colin said he might have run his last marathon after travelling to 17 different countries in completing the feat, which is a first for the Trotters’ members.
“Never say never, but there’s nothing planned,” he said. “My target was to get to the 100.
“My first one was 1997, and then I did another one in 1998, and I didn’t start doing multiple ones until early 2000s so then for 20 years I started doing three or four marathons each year and then you get to 30 to 40 marathons and it went from there.”
Colin, who works for Babcock, has run marathons across Europe and in the United States during the last 25 years, with one of his most recent foreign trips being Ukraine’s Kyiv Marathon in 2019.
He continued: “It takes you to places you wouldn’t normally go – I did the Venice Marathon a few weeks ago, but the last foreign one before that was in Kyiv.
“They have mostly been in Europe. I’ve done a few in the United States – New York, Washington and Boston, I’ve done – but most have been the UK really.
“I think that’s been a bit of it, especially near the end – that it was an excuse to go somewhere. Somewhere that you wouldn’t normally go, and do the marathon and come back.
“It’s been a lot of weekends flying out on the Friday, doing the marathon and then coming back on Monday.”
Although Colin told club-mates his favourite marathon was in Paris, his first still holds special memories.
He said: “New York is pretty special because of where it is, and it was my first one. That was quite special.
“I’ve done a lot of city ones – Rome, Valencia, Lisbon, things like that.
“I’ve done a few coastal ones, particularly in Devon and Cornwall, which have been tough.
“Snowdon was pretty tough. It’s not actually Snowdonia, not up the mountain, but you run around the foothills of the mountain. It’s pretty heavy.”
Colin’s quickest 26.2-mile run was the London Marathon in 2001, in a time of three hours and 10 minutes.
He chose the Cornish Marathon as his 100th because he has run it many more times than any other marathon and it takes place in his home county.
Colin was met at the finish line by his wife, Maggie, who has completed more than 30 marathons herself.
Colin has also completed a handful of ‘ultra marathons’ – anything over and above the 26.2-mile distance – including a 32-mile race Dartmoor.
Although he might have run his last marathon, Colin said the distance can be achieved by anyone – with the right amount of training. “I’m not training as much as I did when I was younger, and it’s a fair sport – you get out what you put in,” he said. “I’m getting older, so I do less training these days, but I’m glad I got to the end. The more you train, the easier it is.”