Mileage man Josh Harris looks to London

A life-long dream has very nearly been realised by Josh Harris after all the miles he has run over the years finally came together in Japan on Sunday producing a marathon time qualifying him for the upcoming world championships in London.

The only remaining hurdle for the 26-year-old is that now he must wait until the qualification period is closed before further celebrating his time of 2:17.08 placing him 26^th in the Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon.

Often labelled as a mileage junkie, the teacher from Launceston can proudly say he has truly entered the realm of elite distance running completely on his own accord and training the only way he knows how, hard.

Following five previous attempts at qualifying for a championship marathon that did not yield the results anywhere near what he expected, Harris proved there is a method to the madness of his weekly running program.

“I’ve said to a few people when I did the 2:20s it just hasn’t felt right and the other day it felt easy, even late in the race I felt pretty comfortable,” Harris explained.

“I don’t know if I just had a good day or if it means there is more in there, but either way it was good.

“Then I just said to myself, ‘no, no you haven’t got it yet just keep ticking off the Ks, don’t risk anything just keep getting them done’.

“I haven’t had that much of a chance to think about things but my whole mentality as an athlete has changed, I guess, my phone has been buzzing ever since.”

The immediate lead-in to the race on Sunday was tough for Harris who was confronted with a few personal issues and also a pesky hamstring concern that thankfully was not a factor during the run.

His recount of the closing stages of the race highlights how much the performance meant to him, barely able to keep his emotions in check to complete the final lap of the stadium knowing he had done exactly what he set out to do.

“Yeah I know, I definitely could have (dipped under 2:17), I thought about it today that I should be a 2:16-man but I broke down with 400m to go, emotionally,” Harris said.

“I don’t know why… probably because I got to the bell and I was just so far under 2:19 and it just hit me, like, ‘I’ve done this’.

“It was about a 75 (my last lap), but that was with all the crying, so I had gears but I didn’t have eight seconds worth of gears.”

Harris has done the work, he has hammered out big mileage week in, week out for years with no excuses and no regrets on the approach he has taken to become an international marathoner.

Many runners have looked through Harris’ astounding training regime on his wildly popular Strava account and shaken their head in disbelief before dismissing his high-mileage program as a plan that could never allow him to race to his potential.

Some will probably still disagree with his methods but for Harris that is irrelevant, he has achieved a life-long dream of recording a qualifying mark for a global championships and can be proud he did it on his terms.

His program for Biwa was actually a bit shorter than previous marathons, but his mileage still peaked at near 240km a week for the month he spent at Falls Creek six weeks out from race day.

In the midst of a good training block here! pic.twitter.com/ndjX5M6pQS

— Josh Harris (@_JoshHarris) February 12, 2017

“Running up to around 240km a week up there was partly due to the fact that I had a shorter build-up this time, just an eight-week block of really marathon specific stuff,” Harris said.

“So I just wanted to make the most of those eight weeks and have a really good consistent block, which in the end I averaged over 220km a week for that time.

“I did want to just get the work done but I also wanted to see signs of progression while up at Falls as well.”

Harris’ mammoth daily running program is recorded on Strava where he eclipses most joggers’ weekly mileage in a day or two – particularly with the four other marathons he has completed as training runs.

To get a gauge of how mentally tough Harris is you only have to listen to him describe his latest monster workout on his infamous ‘uni loop’ – a one-mile course he often completes an hour of fartlek on, known as the ‘hour of power’.

Imagine setting out for about 12 laps of a road loop by yourself early on a Saturday morning going in and out of your ‘comfort zone’ for an hour, amidst a 200km training week.

The wall facing his bed is covered with a big flow chart with short and long-term goals in bold text, a daily reminder of why he goes out every day and pushes his body to its limits.

Anyone who decides to take on the 30,000m national record on the track, which he claimed last year, is stubbornly tough and no doubt played a part in his race on Sunday.

 â€œI’ve always found that the more that I run the faster I am at pretty much every distance event,” Harris said.

“My 5,000m form, if I had raced one on Sunday, would have probably been PB shape, so I’ve never found a point where more mileage slows me down.

“I have done really big Ks in the past, but I’ve always looked back and have seen ways I could have improved and done more.

“Right now, I am pretty much 100 per cent independent, no one is helping me with anything – like not one aspect of running.

“I’m doing everything on my own, no massage, my training program is made without anyone’s advice… but every single session in my program leading up to that race day has a purpose.

“I’m probably not as talented as some of the top distance runners going around but I can still work hard and go and get the results that I did on Sunday.

“It’s good that it finally paid off.”

Now the only thing Harris can do is take a break and get back to the daily grind in Launceston as he waits to see if his three-minute personal best in Biwa is good enough to send him to London in August with an Australian kit.

At the moment, he is the fastest qualified marathoner in Australia but there are a few men around the country who have the capabilities of running fast over the distance.

Jack Colreavy from Sydney University Athletic Club was another Australian who dipped under the qualifying mark in Biwa, running an impressive 2:18.32 in just his second marathon – he too will have a nervous wait.

“It hasn’t been on my wall but I remember setting a life goal about ten years ago to make the Olympics, world championships or Commonwealth Games,” Harris explained.

“It was no more specific than that so it might be time to reassess that.

“I don’t know, it’s going to be pretty nerve-wracking every Sunday I reckon, depending on who is going around.

“I’ve just got prepare as if I’m selected, so I’ve got five months.

“So, I’ll have a bit of a refresh then I’ll start to think about how to get myself in my best shape for August 6, and if I don’t quite make it then the people that have run faster will obviously deserve it.”