Six Years, One Medal: What the London Classics Taught Me About Performance

The London Classics is one of those challenges most people finish before they realise they have started it. Created in 2017 by London Marathon Events, it brings together three of the country's biggest mass participation events - the London Marathon, the RideLondon 100 and the two-mile distance at Swim Serpentine. Complete all three, in any order and over any timeframe, and you receive an outsized medal engraved with the Latin "Et ego Londinium vici", meaning "I too have conquered London", and a place in the Hall of Fame.

For me it took six years, and for most of those years I had no idea I was working towards anything at all. I did the bike because a challenge appealed. I did the run because the marathon had always been on my list. Only later did I discover the Classics existed, realise I was two-thirds of the way there, and set out to finish it deliberately. That accidental shape is the honest version of how a lot of endurance journeys actually go.

But here is the part that matters to me now as a performance coach. Across those six years and three disciplines, every event taught me something I still use and still teach. Three of those lessons I learned the hard way, by getting it badly wrong on the day. One of them I earned the right to prove. Here is the journey, in the order it happened, and what each leg gave me.

RideLondon, 2019: rehearse so you fail cheaply

I had only started cycling in 2018, first as a commute to work and then on social rides with colleagues. I enjoyed it enough to want a proper challenge, so I signed up for RideLondon, the 100-mile sportive on the Surrey roads as it was back then. I did not follow a structured plan for the distance. What I did do was enter the Rutland 60-mile sportive a few months out as a warm-up.

That warm-up did its job, just not in the way I expected. I suffered two punctures, had not properly prepared for the possibility, and spent a chunk of the day at the roadside learning a lesson the cheap way. By the time RideLondon came around I had sorted my kit, my spares and my contingencies. The day itself was glorious. The weather was perfect, I was fit enough to carry the distance even without specific training, and I crossed the line in 5:35 having genuinely loved every mile.

The lesson is one I now build into every athlete's plan. The rehearsal is the point. A B-event exists to surface the problems you would much rather not discover on the start line that counts. Punctures, nutrition that does not agree with you, a niggle, kit that chafes, a pacing plan that falls apart - far better to meet all of it in a low-stakes setting where the only cost is a bit of pride and a slow finish. Rehearse so you fail cheaply, then arrive at the main event having already solved the problems.

London Marathon, 2020 and 2021: you race the conditions, not just the distance

Running has always been my sport, and the London Marathon had always been the one I wanted. I earned a ballot place for 2020, then trained hard for it, and then the world changed. The event was cancelled in its usual form and run virtually instead.

I was working in Cyprus at the time, so my first ever marathon distance was a solo virtual effort in the heat, off the back of a training block that had a month broken out of the middle of it, and - the detail that did the damage - without enough water on me. I finished in 5:12, but it was a grind from a long way out. I had trained for a marathon. I had not planned for the day I actually got.

The rearranged in-person race came in 2021, and I made an almost completely different set of mistakes. This time I barely trained at all. I got swept up in the occasion and the crowds and went out far too fast. And, knowing nothing then about race fuelling, I took on no nutrition whatsoever. The result was predictable in hindsight. I hit the wall hard, was forced to walk large sections, and discovered how brutally difficult it is to start running again once you have stopped. I finished in 5:02, humbled and genuinely disappointed.

Two marathons, two different lessons, both pointing the same way. Fitness is only one input. In 2020 the conditions decided my day - the heat, the hydration, the broken block - and no amount of marathon training would have rescued a plan that ignored them. In 2021 the occasion decided my day - the arousal of the start line pulled me out too fast, and the absence of any fuelling strategy meant I had nothing left to finish on.

You race the conditions, not just the distance. Control the controllables - your pacing discipline, your fuelling, your hydration, your logistics - because the day is shaped by far more than how fit you are. I teach pacing and fuelling now precisely because I have felt, in the most public way possible, what happens without them.

Swim Serpentine, 2025: a base you have built holds when the plan does not

Swimming is, by a distance, my weakest discipline and my poorest technique. So the final leg of the Classics was always going to be the one I had to earn rather than turn up to.

What changed things was triathlon. I started training for it properly in 2024, and in doing so built genuine swimming foundations for the first time in my life, drilling technique and consistency rather than just thrashing up and down a pool. By the time the two-mile Swim Serpentine arrived in September 2025, my preparation was not perfect. My triathlon season had finished in July, which left a long and untidy break before the swim, and my training had faltered in the run-in. And yet I was in a fairly strong place, by my own standards, and finished in 1:15.

That is the one lesson I got to prove rather than learn the hard way. A base you have genuinely built holds when the final block does not. Because I had spent more than a year laying real foundations in my weakest discipline, a ragged taper could not unpick them. Robustness does not come from a flawless final few weeks. It comes from the months of consistent, often unglamorous work that sit underneath them, the work that is still there for you on the day even when the run-in has gone sideways.

For any swimmer out there - apologies for that poor breathing technique...

It is not lost on me that the version of me who finished that swim was unrecognisable from the one who roadside-fixed punctures at Rutland or hit the wall on The Mall. Somewhere across those six years the lessons stopped being things that happened to me and became things I do on purpose.

What it actually means

I collected the Classics medal having genuinely conquered very little in dramatic terms. No podiums, no fast times, plenty of mistakes. What I conquered was the gap between the athlete who started and the coach who finished.

The Classics was also meant to be a stepping stone towards an Ironman in 2026. That particular plan has had to be paused by injury for now, but the base I built getting here has not gone anywhere, and neither has the bigger goal. That, in a sentence, is the whole point of the final lesson.

If there is a thread running through all of it, it is this: preparation, conditions, pacing, fuelling and a real training base are not the boring bits around performance. They are performance. I learned that the hard way so that, these days, the athletes I coach do not have to.

If you are chasing a first finish, a stubborn distance or a goal that scares you a little, this is exactly the work I help people do. You can book a free 15-minute consultation with me at stevebarbour.com to talk through where you are and where you want to get to. Whatever you are working towards, build the base, rehearse the day, and respect the conditions - the medal tends to follow.