Marathon Pipers

Who We Are

Paul and Leah Piper, a husband and wife who are busy professionals during the week and distance runners at the weekend. We both work for one of the world’s largest companies and try to balance both a demanding work schedule involving weekly travel, along with an ambitious personal life. We didn’t meet through running, we actually met through work. At the time I was already hooked on marathons, Leah enjoyed a 5K every now and again but after experiencing her first marathon she was a natural.

Marathonpipers2

What We’ve Done

Some of our running highlights are:

  • In 2015 we became only the 73rd and 74th people in the world to have run a marathon in all 50 US States in under 4 hours each
  • Leah broke the record for the youngest female finisher and we became the first ever married couple to complete the 50Sub4
  • Combined we’ve run over 150 marathons across multiple Continents, Countries and US States
  • We completed a 54 mile Ultramarathon on a course where 40% of the other runners did not manage to finish
  • We ran the Pikes Peak Marathon, billed as “America’s Ultimate Challenge” and recognised as one of the toughest marathons in the world, running up to the summit of a 14,115 ft mountain and then back down again
  • Ran a streak of back-to-back marathon weekends for a total of 14 Marathons in 14 Weeks, all with finishing times that were under 4 hours
  • Our record within a rolling 1 year time period is 34 marathons

We have run marathons in below freezing temperatures, where the water at the aid stations had frozen in the cups and on the other end of the spectrum, marathons in the high 90s (F) / 30s (C) at the peak of summer. Paul ran the Singapore Marathon in 90F with 95% humidity, which equates to a heat index of 127F / 53C, literally stumbling the last 3 miles to the finish.

We have both reached the top, 10 Star Titanium level, in the Marathon Maniacs club, we are members of the 50 States Marathon Club, the 50Sub4 club, the Marathon Globetrotters and associate members of the 100 Marathon Club.

We’ve met some fantastic people on this journey and some amazing athletes who we are privileged to call friends. We’ve also raised money for charities including Cancer Research UK, Dan’s Fund For Burns and closest to our hearts, The Katie Piper Foundation.

Why the website / blog?

Up until recently we maintained an album on Facebook uploading 1 picture per marathon with a brief description. Over time the descriptions got longer as we wanted to share more details and also wanted to start putting up several pictures from the same event. Also other people outside of our Facebook circle would tell us they’d love to read more about what we do and were told by several people that we should write a book. We decided this website would be the next best thing. We were already keeping a record of our runs to look back on, so we thought if other people wanted to read about them too then great!

In addition we hope to raise money for The Katie Piper Foundation. Due to our frequency of running marathons it becomes difficult to get sponsorship for a single particular event as people don’t see running one marathon as anything out of the ordinary for us. We hope that by documenting our overall efforts along with the challenges such as the 50 States, people will feel inspired to donate to this excellent cause.

Our aim is to share more about our experiences and hopefully if you enjoyed the Facebook album updates you’ll also enjoy this site. You can follow our progress, read about the marathons we run or get some insight from a participant’s view of an event you might be planning to run. We’ve also included our watch data elevation graphs for courses as we’ve found from our own experience that it’s been useful to find these from other people when not officially provided by an event.

Your questions or comments are always welcome, we love to hear back from you.

2 Comments

  1. Way to go!! I’m inspired by the dedication and the partnership the two of you share in what is seriously an insane and ambitious and truly cool endeavor.

    • Thanks so much Jean! It’s comments like yours that keep us going and which we think back to, in order to put smiles on our faces during the tough runs.

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