Marcus England used to play a lot of football but he isn’t one of those people who couldn’t let go of the beautiful game once he’d hung up his boots.

On the contrary, the recently turned 37-year-old wishes he’d stopped playing a lot sooner which would have meant he could have concentrated on his current sport – running – at a much younger age.

“I didn’t start properly running until I was about 30, I wish I’d started when I was 18.” said the Cheltenham Harrier. “I was addicted to football when I was a teenager, I used to play for Prestbury Rovers.

“Football was the be-all and end-all.”

Prestbury play in the Cheltenham League and England continued: “I used to be a midfielder. I had a good engine and I could get around the park, I made a nuisance of myself.”

Having a ‘good engine’ is one of the keys to his success as a runner, of course, and very good at it he is too as he prepares to run the London Marathon on Sunday 28th April.

It will be the fourth time he has taken part in one of the most famous races in the world and he clocked a personal best of two hours, 37 minutes, 47 seconds in 2017.

He’s also run the Paris and Bournemouth marathons but still “feels a bit of a rookie at marathons”.

Rookie or not England, who is a civil servant, would love to break two hours, 30 this year and if he does that would be some achievement when you consider his first race of any kind was as recently as October 2013.

“It was the Cheltenham Half and I ran it with my work colleague Matt Hitchings,” he explained. “I think we ran it in about one hour, 35.”

That’s not a bad time, of course, and England soon realised he was quite a good runner.

“As my times started to get better, I thought maybe I’m quick enough to join a club,” he said.

So he did, joining Cheltenham Harriers four or five years ago and it’s fair to say he’s never looked back.

“They’ve brought me on so much,” he said. “Everything seemed to improve. They’ve got such a good group to go out running with, there’s always guys quicker than you so there is always someone to chase.

“Dave Newport is a really good coach and Andy Prophett is so supportive as team manager.”

England says he has yet to post what he considers a good marathon time and while some may disagree with that he’s certainly been recording some pretty impressive numbers over other distances.

He ran one hour, 10 minutes, 20 seconds in the Oxford Half is October which earned him fifth place and he got his 10K PB down by over a minute last year to 32 minutes, 14 seconds.

“Based on my half marathon time, I should run London in something under two hours, 30,” he said. “That’s the goal. Anywhere around 2.28 or 2.29 I’ll be very happy but that’s a big jump.”

When England spoke to The Local Answer he was recovering from a bout of flu – he’d also got a bit of a sore knee and hip – but it wasn’t preventing him from running some 80 to 90 miles a week in preparation for the big day.

That’s a lot of miles and as a married dad of one – he and Natasha have a baby girl, Grace, who is one – he can often be seen out and about on training runs around his home in Bishop’s Cleeve at some very unlikely times.

“I go out in the early hours or late in the evening,” he explained. “I will get up and go for a run at 5am in the morning and be back before the family are up.

“The good thing about running is the freedom it gives you, you can do it when you want.

“It’s a lot easier to work it around family and work life.”

So what’s going through his mind when he’s running?

“When I’m training it’s such a nice way to relax, it’s my downtime,” he said. “It’s different during races because you’re trying to achieve something you didn’t think you could.

“You’re trying to break the pain barrier, that’s what pushes you on.

“It’s a mental battle because you do get low patches, you’ve got to stick to your gameplan.”

And his gameplan in the coming years is to concentrate more on half marathons and marathons because over 5K and 10K there are “so many youngsters running really fast times”.

In years to come, England’s daughter could be one of those runners posting really fast times and, if she does, having the name ‘England’ on her vest can certainly help capture people’s imagination.

“Not if you’re running in South Wales,” laughed her dad. “You don’t get too many cheers in Swansea if you’re called England!”

Fortunately for the former Bishop’s Cleeve Secondary School pupil, he is heading east and not west in the last Sunday in April!