‘I thought I would run one’: marathon runner, 60, nears 200th race, yet says running doesn’t come naturally
- Michael Cartwright took up running at 44, and ran his first marathon three years later; since retiring in 2014, he’s been averaging 20 marathons a year
- As he looks ahead to his 200th next month in Thailand, the former Hong Kong police officer reveals the joy racing brings him and his tips for finishing 42.1km
To lose weight and get back in shape, Michael Cartwright took up running in 2003, aged 44. His fitness quest was to become an enduring passion. Fast forward 16 years and Cartwright, now 60, is poised to run his 200th full marathon in Phuket next month.
Cartwright had moved to Hong Kong from the UK as a 19-year-old and joined the Hong Kong Police Force. When he laced up his trainers in middle age, he took it easy: “I ran short distances at first, two kilometres, then three, and gradually built up my stamina to run up to 10 kilometres.”
When running 10km no longer seemed hard, Cartwright signed up for the inaugural Phuket Half Marathon [21.1km] in 2005.
“I watched the full marathon [42.1km] runners passing by, looking exhausted and I remember saying to myself that those people were crazy and that I was never going to do that,” he recalls with a smile.
A year later, inspired by Dean Karnazes’ book Ultra Marathon Man that chronicles the American author’s journey of running the equivalent of 10 marathons across Death Valley and Sierra Nevada in California and the South Pole, Cartwright found himself at the starting line of the 2006 Beijing Marathon.
“I thought I would run one marathon and then probably go back to running half marathons,” he says. The Beijing race had a daunting cut-off time of five hours, so Cartwright hired a running coach.