Olympic triathlon champion explains why his marathon debut in London will be about so much more than covering 26.2 miles

Alex Yee vividly remembers the races he would run at his home track in the Ladywell Arena in Lewisham to qualify for the Mini London Marathon and represent his local borough. Back then, the aspiring youngsters were fighting it out for the right to compete over the closing three miles of the full marathon route, from Old Billingsgate Market to The Mall, and between 2010 and 2015 he achieved the feat four times, twice finishing third in his age group.

A decade and one day on from his final Mini Marathon appearance, the now 27-year-old will complete the circle by lining up on the start line of the main event for the first time. The fact that the venue he first set foot in during his early days with Kent AC has been renamed as the Alex Yee Ladywell Arena perhaps best illustrates just how much life has changed for him in the intervening years.

“He’d be amazed,” says Yee, when asked what that teenager would make of his older self’s achievements to date. It’s an impressive list.

Yee was once mooted as a potential heir to Mo Farah on the track, a British 10,000m champion in 2018 as well as European Cross Country medallist. However, it was only through triathlon that he first discovered his love of running and it’s in that multi-sport discipline where his star has shone brightest. He is the most successful Olympic triathlete ever, having won individual gold in the men’s event and Mixed Relay bronze in Paris last summer to add to his Mixed Relay gold and individual silver from Tokyo 2020. He was crowned world champion in 2024, too – only the second man to win that title and Olympic gold in the same year – while he is also a two-time Commonwealth gold medallist.

“From 2010 to 2015 my only goal of going to London was to run as fast as I could and have the best time I could with the people around me,” he says, casting his mind back. “To start off a sport just for the love of it, and still to be doing that for the same reason, I think is incredibly special.”

Those initial encounters with racing on the streets of London were central to Yee’s early education as an athlete, though he admits that wasn’t necessarily his priority at first.

“I think in 2010 and 2011 most of my excitement probably came from going to Chinatown to have Dim sum after the race and it motivating me to get to the finish line!” he laughs. “To do that last three miles, I think I probably took it for granted for the first few years.

“But, as I got older and started to stay on a little bit [for the main race] afterwards, I began to appreciate that this was more than just a race. After 2012 there was more of an appreciation of sport, of the Olympics, the marathon and what it meant. It was during those years when I started to try to get in that front row to watch the elite guys come past.

“Having done some of the training, now I’m even more in awe of them because of how incredibly hard it is. It's pretty cool to think that I was once one of those people leaning over the barriers, cheering on everyone and hopefully I can be in that position [of being cheered on] as well.”

Yee’s profile, not to mention his running ability, means that his marathon debut is a particularly intriguing storyline at this year’s event. Just as with the Mini Marathon, the idea of learning more about his capabilities is a central theme.

Anyone who witnessed his brilliantly timed late surge to grab Olympic gold ahead of New Zealand’s Hayden Wilde back in August might disagree, but Yee insists he has work to do when it comes to his running. With the next Games in Los Angeles not rolling around until 2028, he decided to seize the chance to shake things up a bit.

“To find where my limits are,” he says, when asked what he is looking to get out of the experience. “Post-Olympics, I wanted to do something that challenged me and hopefully allowed me to grow as an athlete. I haven't been able to work on my running for five years, and this felt like the right time to work on that again, but then I also have a deep love for the London Marathon and it’s one of my only bucket list races.”

As someone who competes in the Olympic or “standard” distance triathlon, it’s usually a 10km assignment which Yee has to tackle – immediately after having swum 1.5km and cycled 40km. His marathon mission means he has to run over four times further than normal, but the event in which he has made his name is never far from his thoughts.

“I know that if I do the same thing as I did before, I don't think I'll get the same outcome because, fundamentally, I'm a different person than I was three years ago,” he says of this new Olympic training cycle.
“I need to do things slightly differently. Ultimately the goal is to go to LA and to be as competitive as I can there in triathlon but I think doing it in a way where I work on different bits, become a better person and a better athlete, is something that is exciting me at the moment.

“I’ve been very lucky in triathlon that I’ve been able to be competitive at the back end of a run on a few occasions, but I have also been left vulnerable on the odd occasion, and I would love to be in a position where I just test my limits and see what I can achieve. Is consistently running under 29 minutes or [around] 28:30 off the bike for 10km possible? What is the limit of my body that I can achieve and what can I find? That's something which keeps me up at night, keeps me excited and keeps me pushing the envelope.”

On the afternoon when Yee sits down to chat with AW, he admits to feeling a little weary – perhaps not surprising given that the interview takes place not too long after the completion of a running session that included a continuous 30km effort and involved a few pace variations.

“I'm trying to get the best feel for what the marathon will feel like,” he says. “There's a little bit of the unknown about it for me, but the more we can make it less of an intimidating distance, the more understanding we have of my physiology and what I can do then hopefully it won't be a scary distance and instead be something which I'll really look forward to. Then the day can be a bit more of a celebration than a bit of a scary fact-finding mission.”

Yee’s is by no means a conventional marathon training plan. Yes, he is placing a bit more emphasis on his running but he isn’t just ignoring the other two triathlon disciplines, either.
“I’m doing about five hours of swimming at the moment, eight to nine hours on the bike and then my running volume is probably between nine and 10 hours, so between 80-90 miles,” he says of a typical training week at his Loughborough base.

“I'm doing a lot of my running as longer single runs, instead of doing a few smaller double runs, and then I supplement the second aerobic stimulus of the day with a ride or swim. It helps to keep a feel for the swim and the bike, but also provides that extra stimulus that the guys are getting when they're running 120-130 miles a week.

“It’s a low volume programme in comparison to guys running crazy distances and it's been interesting to learn and to be a bit unique and a bit different in my preparation. Hopefully I can either pave the way or show people what not to do in preparation for a marathon!”

Yee is a big admirer of a man who has proved himself adept at leading by example in the marathon but it was Eliud Kipchoge who publicly stated his desire to meet with the champion triathlete. The two are due to spend a little time together in London, where no doubt the Kenyan will impart some of his trademark words of wisdom. There are echoes of Kipchoge’s philosophical nature in Yee’s words, though, when he comes back to the thinking behind his marathon debut.

“I think where we do our most growth is when we don't know stuff about ourselves and we're learning,” he says. “Learning is an important part of being an elite athlete, and if you're not doing it, then I don't think that you're able to progress and grow.

“It's been great for me to be able to learn about myself, but also put myself in an environment which I don't know much about. I guess I go into the London Marathon a bit like tens of thousands of other people do, being a novice and experiencing it for the first time, and that's really exciting.

“It’s a place where I feel like I’ll do my most growth and my most learning and hopefully we'll be able to take that back to triathlon, to running 10,000m on the track, to whatever it may be in a few months’ time. Hopefully I’ll be able to be a better athlete from it.”

Where Yee differs from so many first-time marathon runners, of course, is not just in his athletic pedigree but also his target time, albeit he isn’t about to make any outlandish claims.

“If I'm being honest, the goalposts keep shifting week on week,” he says about what he might be capable of. “But I would love to be in that 2:08 to 2:09 bracket. I hope that there'll be a lot of British guys around there in the field. I'm sure there will be a few who will try and go quicker, but hopefully that puts me in that competitive domestic field, and I'd love to be a part of that.

“If I can do that then who knows? Maybe I can come back and do another marathon at some point but we'll have to see. I think my potential hopefully sits a little bit higher than what I can achieve in London so hopefully I can show that at some point in the future.

“Pre LA, my mind is fully focused on the triathlon, but I think over this year there may be another opportunity to do a marathon. It's a long season and there are plenty of opportunities during the first year of an Olympic cycle. I don't have the complete answers yet. I’ll probably have a few more answers once I cross that finish line and I either have a hunger for more or a desire to get back to the swim and bike after experiencing that level of pain. I'm really excited to do it and hopefully I can put down a good marker.”

That marker should make him the fastest marathon runner in his family by quite some distance. Yee’s parents have both run London and that he is about to get his own taste of the event which begins so close to where he grew up – a showpiece that has been part of the fabric of his sporting life – is a particularly enticing prospect.

“Experiencing what I've heard so many other people talk about experiencing, from the atmosphere, to the bands, to the noise,” he says of what he is most looking forward to. “I want to soak that up as much as possible, as well as trying to run the best race I can.”

This time, covering those final three miles of the marathon route is going to be a rather different experience to 10 years ago.

“I wonder what that last 5km will feel like?” says Yee. “[I won’t find that out until] I'm in that last 5km. I'm looking forward to that, in a way. I think that's the best way I can do it – looking forward to that challenge rather than fearing it.”