Phillip Howells ran his first marathon in March 1982 and since then – at the time of writing – he has run another 273.

That’s some going and all the more impressive when you consider that Howells, who has been a member of Tewkesbury Running Club for the past 10 years, is now aged 72.

And even though he is now well into his eighth decade, Howells is going to keep on running and running.

“I want to run 333 marathons,” he said. “When I did my 100th marathon – the 56-mile Comrades Marathon in South Africa in 2010 – I’d reached a major life objective.

“More people have climbed Everest than done 100 marathons so I did ask myself if I wanted to continue.”

The answer turned out to be quite straightforward.

“I enjoy it and I’m good at it,” he said.

So why the target of 333 marathons?

“I looked at my list after I’d run 100 marathons and I worked out that I averaged 33 miles per race,” explained Howells, who logs every race on a spreadsheet.

“Those 100 marathons included road races, which are 26.2 miles, trail marathons which can be anything from 26 to 29 miles, and ultra marathons which are anything above 30 miles.

“I thought I can run another 10 or 15 years so that means I can run 300 marathons, but then I thought why not try for 333 and average 33 miles a marathon?

“That would be 10,000 miles so that gave me a goal to go towards!”

When he completes his 300th marathon – there are no ‘ifs’ about it as far as Howells is concerned – he wants to have run exactly 100 of each of the three marathon distances, saying: “I’d be the first person in the UK to achieve that.”

And the arithmetic is currently almost spot on because he has run 91 road marathons, 93 trail marathons and 90 ultra marathons.

And he wants the perfect symmetry when he’s run his 333rd marathon as well – 111 in each of the three distances.

“Quite a lot of people have done more than 300 marathons but no one has done 100 of each by the time they’ve run their 300th and only six people in the 650-member 100 marathon club have done at least 100 of each,” continued Howells.

“I’ll certainly be the first over-70 to get to 100 of each, that’ll be quite an achievement and, as far as I know, when I get to 333 I’ll be the only person in the world to reach that number having run 111 of each.”

Howells was a decent runner when he was younger – he’s run five sub-three-hour, 30-minute marathons – but obviously running does not come as easily to him as it once did.

He admits to suffering from a condition known as atrial fibrillation in which the heart flutters and leads to painful oxygen-starved tingling in the muscles but says: “Yes, it is a challenge, but I’m a bit bloody-minded and it will be an amazing thing to achieve.”

He has to select his races carefully these days, choosing those where the time limit is a bit more generous, and also admits that that he probably fails to finish in one out of five attempts.

And while that may be so – not surprisingly really – he says that if he is feeling good he can still run a road marathon in five and a half hours.

“I think my 300th marathon should be some time next year,” he said. “And I think I can do the remaining 33 in another two years. I want to complete it before I’m 75.”

As Howells said, it will be some achievement and running 300-plus marathons was certainly the last thing on his mind when he ran his first marathon on 21st March 1982.

“It was at Wolverhampton and I ran three hours, 50 minutes which was a decent time,” he said. “I ran my second a few weeks later on 3rd May at Telford and finished in three hours, 26 minutes.

“I thought that would be a lifetime best but I ran three hours, 20, minutes, 47 seconds at La Rochelle in 2004 when I was 57!”

He’s also run the London Marathon three times – he qualified for Good for Age last year – and has competed in 161 different event courses over the years in 10 different countries.

The toughest was the Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon in South Africa – a self-sufficient 250-kilometre run over seven days that takes in the Kalahari Desert – while his favourite road event is the New York Marathon.

“You run five through all five boroughs, it’s an astonishing marathon,” he said.

Closer to home he likes the Snowdonia Marathon describing it “as an iconic run on road around Snowdon”.

He’s done that marathon nine times and Snowdon is less than 100 miles from Much Wenlock in Shropshire, the place where Howells was born.

“Much Wenlock is famous for being the inspiration for the modern Olympics,” said Howells. “Dr William Penny Brookes decided that the poor needed something to do so he set up the Wenlock Olympics in 1850. Ten thousand people used to come to these events.”

And in 1890 one of those was attending was Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the Olympic Committee and its second president.

He obviously liked what he saw because six years after his visit to Much Wenlock the first ever Olympic Games was held in Athens, but Much Wenlock’s influence was remembered as recently as 2012 when one of the mascots at the London Olympics was named Wenlock.

Howells now lives in Ledbury, a market town in Herefordshire just the other side of the Gloucestershire border and fewer than 20 miles from Tewkesbury.

And while he is still running for fun, he was also a very keen cyclist back in the day and as with his running he was pretty good at it.

“In my lifetime I’ve taken part in over 1,200 races,” he said. “I’ve done something like 700 running races, about 400 cycle races – time trails and on the track – about 10 triathlons and I was also Northern Ireland and Hong Kong Army orienteering champion.”

Howells served his country in Hong Kong, Berlin and Northern Ireland and he achieved one of his three lifetime ambitions while in the Army.

“I always wanted to be an officer in the Army,” he said. “I also wanted to make lots of money and become an MP.”

He left the Army as a Lieutenant before becoming a very successful business consultant, so two boxes were ticked and he came close to ticking the third as well.

“I stood twice as a Conservative candidate in 2001 and 2005,” he said. “It was in Neil Kinnock’s old constituency of Islwyn.”

Howells is one of life’s enthusiasts, easy to interview, and although he didn’t quite make it into Parliament his interest in politics has remained strong – he’s a firm Remainer – so much so that he is now a LibDem councillor in Ledbury.

And that’s not all because he has also been elected as the town’s mayor and council chairman and is also a Herefordshire county councillor.

That’s pretty full-on and it’s a wonder he’s got the time to run as well, so where does he get all his drive and energy from?

“My second wife Maggie died of cancer when I was 50,” he said. “She was my soul mate but there is still a life to lead. You have to work through the grief, recharge and reinvent yourself.

“I’ve had rewards that I’d never have imagined possible.”

And it seems certain there are still plenty more to come!