In this moving and insightful episode of Martial Attitude Voice, we sit down with Andrew Jones, a blind runner who completed the London Marathon on April 27th. What began as a one-off challenge turned into a personal mission marked by resilience, adaptation, and a deep love for the sport. Andrew shares the mental and logistical hurdles of running blind, the delicate balance between performance and injury, and how family, community, and mindset keep him going through the miles.
From caffeine mishaps to smart training decisions, Andrew opens up about what it takes to pursue an “arbitrary” sub-4-hour goal—years after his personal best—and why the act of running itself remains so meaningful. A powerful conversation about challenge, perspective, and doing what you "shouldn't be able to do."
His reflection on being a source of inspiration for his son brings the narrative full circle. Faced with the very real prospect of losing his sight, he could have easily surrendered to fear, pity, or despair. Instead, he chose to continue forward—not in denial of the risk, but in defiance of the limitations it threatened to impose. In doing so, he reframed vulnerability as strength, turning a moment of potential collapse into one of quiet resilience. It’s this act—not of bravado, but of deliberate courage—that speaks most powerfully to his character. For his son, and perhaps for himself, he became living proof that adversity doesn’t have to define you; it can refine you.
Mathias Alberton (00:03)
Hello everyone, this is Mathias Alberton. I'm the creator of Martial Attitude. This is Martial Attitude Voice. And as you might know, this is a podcast dedicated to sports psychology, the concept of discipline, the concept of discovering something useful for our lives throughout different experiences in different domains of sport. But as you know, I developed through the years ⁓ a keen interest in the concept of touch, touch exchange, confidence, primarily when related to visual impairment and or blindness. And I developed, created this idea of martial attitude training, therefore bespoke training program for visually impaired and blind people that I am implementing in London with a series of workshops running on Sunday afternoon in central London. And I have written a paper that you can find in the links. I have discussed about it quite at length. And I'm going to present this research soon in June in a couple of conferences.
One in Bucharest and Romania and the other one in Kerry Ireland. And you know that I have dedicated a good amount of time in talking with different visually impaired and blind people to see exactly what their experiences are. And we had on this podcast, on this show, we did have the possibility to speak as well with a Paralympian.
I'm based in London and the guys that I'm working with at martial arts training are very cool people and not they are cool because they are coming to train with me, which is cool enough, but because they are cool on their own. One of these people is Andrew Jones and you know him also from a post that I did a time ago on Instagram, a picture with him. And this guy is fairly awesome.
He just run the London Marathon, which was. They did it in April 27 on Sunday. So a few weeks back now. But because of this London Marathon, I lost the opportunity to train with him for a while because he was training for the marathon. Now he's on the show with us. Ciao, Andrew. How do you do?
Andrew Jones (02:54)
I'm good, thank you. Thank you for the chance to speak with you again.
Mathias Alberton (02:58)
Well, the chance is mine because he's kind of, you know, talking with the Pope. You're always busy on something else.
Andrew Jones (03:08)
I guess it's trying to do too much exercise probably.
Mathias Alberton (03:12)
Yeah, possibly. That's true. So it's a good thing in a way. So what happened? We have to talk about this marathon and we have to talk about this marathon because you are always been running ⁓ as a sport activity, isn't it?
Andrew Jones (03:34)
I did my first marathon in 2003. Sorry, no, 2005, so 20 years ago. And part of the reason for that first one was because I realised that my central vision was deteriorating. So I'd already lost my peripheral vision at the sides. And with my condition retinitis pigmentosa, or RP, one of the things for a lot of people that goes in the latter stages is your central vision. And I'd watched the first London Marathon on the television in 1981 and always thought I'd like to run it. So as my central vision was going, I thought I might not be able to run the marathon in the future. And I'd just started running with some friends. And so I had the opportunity to get a charity place. And I thought, that was gonna be my last chance to run the marathon. A year later, I ran for the last time a half marathon on my own, because I missed my guide at the start of the race. And I thought, well, I've done all the training, but because my eyesight was getting worse, I chose at that point not to run on my own anymore. So the half marathon at the Silverstone racetrack, in 2006 was the last time I ran on my own. So at that point, I either learned to run on a treadmill or give up running. And I just decided that I didn't want to give up running. I enjoyed it and I've got something out of it. So I started going to a gym to run on the treadmill. And then eventually I bought my own treadmill to have at home.
And then gradually in 2017, I started going to park run. A couple of years later, I joined the UK chapter of Achilles International. So I did a marathon in 2011 running with a friend and I ran each Sunday and he was quite local. I ran with someone I'd met through Metro Blindsport in 2021.
And then London Marathon started offering guaranteed places to people with disabilities to try and increase diversity in terms of the participation. So this year and last year, I got into the marathon using one of those places. But I suppose I've had to realign my goals. I've always had this idea that I wanted to break four hours.
And it's completely arbitrary. It's not going to win me any records breaking four hours. It doesn't make me elite. If I did it, nobody but me is going to care particularly. But it's just one of those goals that you can have. But as you get older, things like that get harder. So I've been trying to look at what do I need to do to keep my running pace or to be able to get the four hours. When I ran last year, I had been running on my toes a lot. So I went to sit into a running store and the guy looked at me running on the treadmill and was like, your heels aren't even touching the treadmill. I was like, no, I'm running on my toes. He said, yeah, but they're not meant to, you're not meant to run on your toes the whole time. That's like if you're sprinting and I just flipped a switch if you like and stopped running on my toes so much. the issue I had last year where my Achilles was getting stiff just went away. This year I picked up an injury after trying to run outside on the pavement.
But as I said, was trying to, so this year I was kind of trying to get my head round, sorting this injury and still getting a good time in the marathon. And then I started worrying about not letting my guide down if I was injured and so at points I found it hard and the thing I got wrong I suppose, I didn't back off my running soon enough. The first injury I got at the end of December and that was fine and we sorted that. And then I got another injury partly as a result of some of the things I was doing to sort the first one but I didn't back off my running. I was running five times a week, doing my physio exercises, trying to do three lots of strength training.
So my injury had no time to recover. And I think it was probably the last session before I was off when I came to do the martial attitude training. And you asked me how the running was going and I think I was saying, it's a bit terrible, I'm injured and I'm trying to look at whether I need to defer my place or even if I'm allowed to. And I ended up having a conversation with my guide about whether we deferred. But the following week I did the London landmarks half marathon.
And we were both really chuffed having talked about pulling out. It worked really well and I managed to hold ⁓ a reasonable pace. And I suppose what that told me was I had a lot of the what you're wanting and a lot of what you achieve depends on your mindset. If you think, it's all gone and it's not worth it and it is very negative. Whereas if you think, let's see what we can do. And as my guide said, we chose to this, enter these races. So they're meant to hurt, but you enjoy it. It gives you a different mindset. So we set off and held a good pace. And in the marathon, it was harder because I hadn't done enough running because of my injury, but we stuck with it and in the end I really enjoyed it even though it was my slowest marathon yet.
So that's kind of where we got to. don't know you wanted to check particular things that I mentioned there or clarify anything.
Mathias Alberton (10:35)
Absolutely. There are so many aspects of it which are fascinating to me. The first one is when you were describing when you got into marathon, the idea of this is going to be my last marathon. And instead it was just the first one pretty much, or something that you started running, but then the vision got worse, ⁓ but you still kept on running. did you decide to stick to the marathon, the running, because you were already knowing how to deliver this kind of exercise, if you wish, or just because, you know, no, I tried other things, but this one is what I prefer? What was the rationale there to stick to the marathon, even if you couldn't see properly or at all.
Andrew Jones (11:38)
I'm not sure. Part of the thing I suppose is it's more of a challenge. I wasn't doing part run. The availability of guides hadn't developed through Achilles and part run and the Finder Guide scheme through England Athletics. So I wasn't doing a lot of other running. I was just running on my own and then trying to take part in some marathons, because that's what I knew about, I suppose. And the thing it's not that I know how to do them. think even the elites, they're great at running and they get fantastic times, but everyone makes mistakes. So the other week when I ran the marathon, everyone had to change the times that they were aiming for because of the heat. I had to change what I thought I might do because of my injury.
The longest run I'd done because my injury was about 16 miles. So after I thought, well, I can get to 20 miles. That's probably, I can do that on the basis of what I've run before. But after that, I had no idea what was going to happen. Were my legs gonna give up on me or was it just gonna be too much? If I push too hard, am I gonna collapse? You don't know.
And I think that's what makes marathons a challenge. There's so many different things. I nearly broke four hours in 2011 when I was a bit younger. But I I've been picking up the benefits of having caffeine, but I didn't really drink coffee at the time. So just before I crossed the start line, I downed two cans of Red Bull.
Now what I was thinking, I don't know. Because I knew that you're not meant to do anything different on race day. But in my head, I'm thinking, but then I get the benefit of caffeine. But it meant I wanted to go to the loo, you know, a few miles into the race. And it also meant later on, the boost I'd had from the caffeine was taking its toll.
So my friend's watch when we crossed the finish line, I think it said 359.59, but his watch has stopped when we stopped to go to the loo and when we went through some of the tunnels. And we were chatting for a while afterwards and lying down on the grass, I think by St. James's Park. And then I got up and ended up spending two hours in the first aid tent, because I was just gone. I had nothing left and there was nothing really wrong with me other than I was just exhausted.
So all these things can go wrong in the marathon. And I was listening to a, I think it was a podcast recently, where somebody was talking about the things that can make people happy. And one of the things that they said is, you have to do things that challenge you. Because if nothing's ever difficult, how do you appreciate when your everyday mundane things if you've never had something, never done something hard. So in terms of my running, there's an aspect of it that's trying to do something that I shouldn't be able to do. So there's nothing stopping me from running, but because of my eyesight, there's logistical things that are logistically difficult, like finding a guide and even if I do a lot of running on the treadmill, running on the treadmill isn't the same as running outside. It's a different movement pattern. So on the treadmill, I don't propel myself forward. The treadmill is moving me forward, essentially. I just have to hold on. Whereas when you run normally outside, your legs are propelling you forward. So that has a different impact on your muscles.
If I run solely on the treadmill, I can come unstuck when I then try and do the marathon because I haven't run outside enough. If the guides I have live in central London and I want to do a three hour training run, that can end up being a six hour round trip, which takes its toll on the family. you get, you know, I might be leaving at half past seven in the morning and I get back at lunchtime and I'm a bit of a waste of space for the rest of the day. So for me, there's so many different things to look at. The amount you train, your nutrition. For this last, coming up to the marathon last couple of weeks, I really tried to focus on my sleep. So there's research, everybody the night before the marathon doesn't sleep well very few people get a great night's sleep. It's just nerves and that's well documented. But there's research saying you do well to increase your sleep in the week leading up to the marathon. So I tried to sort that and managed to get eight hours sleep or more for 12 out of the 14 nights before the marathon. So that I was really pleased. I measured my heart rate variability. But what I found last year, I've been getting good results and then on the morning of the marathon, it dipped.
And that got me on a bit of a downer. I was like, ⁓ I wanted it to be like peak performance for the marathon. So my strategy this year, I measured it in the week up to the marathon, but on race morning on the Sunday, didn't take the measurement. Because I thought, what difference is it going to make? If it's good, great. If it's not a good outcome, does that mean the race is just scuppered and I'm not going to do well, it doesn't mean that at all, but it can put you into a negative spiral. So I just thought I won't take the reading because it's not going to help. I'm going to do it even if it says I'm not fit to do the marathon. I've been trying to look at things that I can do that put me in a better place. And I think one of the things is your attitude and how you think about things. So sometimes previously I would have done a run and it's getting hard or I tweak something and I perhaps ought to stop. Now I'm meant to be doing a two hour run today so I'm going to do my two hour run. So I mentioned about doing the calling to speak with my guide.
I was doing what was meant to be my longest run on the triple. So I was aiming for a three and half hour run on the triple. And at two hours, 20 minutes, I got a bit of a... I don't know what you'd call it, a slight inkling that my knee wasn't happy. I thought, well, let's go up to two and a half hours and then I can take a walk break for a minute and then see how we do. And I got to two and a half hours, had my walk break and then pressed the button on the treadmill to get going again, but the speed tweaked my injury.
And my decision at that point, although I could have kept going, I thought, if I keep going now, I can get to three and a half hours, but that might be my race done. So rather than running on the 27th, I've done it two weeks earlier, or however long it was on the triple. So I just stopped my training session there and then. And I felt awkward, but it was probably the right thing to do.
And there are so many of those decisions. I tried running last night. It was my first run since the marathon and it felt terrible. So I stopped. I did 10 minutes. And what I've been learning is just to, I suppose, listen to my body. And just because you set out to do a particular run doesn't mean you have to do that because you don't want an injury. Maybe I hadn't stretched enough, I don't think. So I did that afterwards and felt much better. But there are elite marathon runners who get halfway or further.
Mathias Alberton (21:15)
But that's also the benefit of age, isn't it?
Andrew Jones (21:20)
Yeah. I just have to listen to what's going on. The thing I found hard is determining whether I should give up on trying to break four hours properly. I've come very close, but it's such an arbitrary goal. And like I said, nobody else cares. No, I care, but actually it might not be possible for me still to break four hours.
Mathias Alberton (22:06)
Well, before you telling me if it is possible or not, because we know that many things are really possible beyond reasonable doubt, let's say. So because you want to talk about performance, what was your final performance in the end of the marathon?
Andrew Jones (22:30)
Five hours, 24 minutes.
Mathias Alberton (22:33)
And you that the previous one, your personal best, let's say on the marathon is.
Andrew Jones (22:41)
Four hours, four minutes.
Mathias Alberton (22:43)
Right. So a lot has happened before this marathon. Not only the first injury, the second one. You know, do you think that these things were the one that dominated your performance or there was something else apart from the heat? You know, a lot of stuff is going on, obviously, apart from having one more ear.
So you're a bit older. So what do you account was the main reason of the gap between your personal best and the five hours to an event.
Andrew Jones (23:26)
I think that the biggest thing is possibly my age.
But because it's only an arbitrary goal, it's not that doing four hours is only achievable before the age of 40. So in principle, I could do it still. I just need lots of things to go well. So I need my training to do the right training, not to get injured. I need things, not too many things to come up with my family, work to be okay but they're not all in my control. So I suppose one of the things that I appreciate is just my colleagues are supportive and encourage me. My family is very supportive, particularly when I'm doing long runs and you know. There's a joke about how know somebody's a runner and the response is you don't have to worry, they'll tell you. Because runners like talking about their running.
So my family put up with that. You spend money on your running and there's all sorts of things. I actually think I train better now than I did when I got my personal best. It's just the time I did then, I managed without running so much and without the training being so good just because I was younger, whereas now if I want to get...
Mathias Alberton (25:29)
And do you think that the partner you are running with plays a big role in the final performance time?
Andrew Jones (25:44)
It's certainly, there's certainly a factor in it, a big part of it. If you can't run a particular time, no guide is going to get you there. And when I joke with people, all I'm doing is putting one foot in front of the other, my guide's doing all the work. And to be honest, the people guiding someone with a visual impairment in a marathon, they take on a huge task. The amount of concentration they need to get through the crowds and it's massive. And I'm just doing as I'm told and trying to listen. And hopefully having done my training. So they get you through the race and navigate the crowds, maybe keep you on pace. But they're not.
They're not doing the training for you. They might train with you, but you've got to the work in. But on the day, it's... There's a couple of things. It's trying to enjoy it and to relax. Trying to push where you need to or if you're trying to get a particular performance. But after that, I think a lot of it is the guide. Because if they're not concentrating, all sorts of things can go wrong. If you don't understand each other or communicate with each other, all sorts of things can go wrong. When I ran last year, I loved it. I gave up on trying to achieve four hours and I managed that by running with someone who hadn't run a marathon before. So he said, we're not getting four hours, it's just not on the cards. And I ran with him because of that, because I thought if I put... I didn't think I had the fitness to do it at that point. And I thought if I run with someone where it's a possibility, I might run myself into the ground or get injured. So this guide that I ran with, having never run a marathon before, he's running his first marathon whilst guiding me around.
And he did a fantastic job. And I loved it because we, I didn't feel beaten, I didn't give up with it. We had a strategy and stuck to it. The strategy we had was taking a 30 second walk break every 30 minutes. And we pretty much stuck to that the whole way through. And that's kind of what we stuck to this time.
But because I didn't have the training in my legs, I knew that it might not last. So we pretty much did that up to four hours and then I needed to take a walk break every 10 minutes because my legs were gone. When I was taking the walk breaks, my breathing and my heart rate weren't coming down, which was, I suppose, worrying me because I knew that I was at the point where my legs, I wasn't in a collapse and like a heart attack.
It was more that just my legs could have given way, because they'd had enough. But the fact that my heart rate and my breathing weren't coming down was, it was bothering me. was, there was a bit of a, I suppose thoughts in the back of my head, am I pushing too hard? And I thought, no, look at the pace we're going, it's fine. And my breathing wasn't getting quicker.
So we just got going again. I took a bit of a rest and my guide said, we don't have to run the rest of it if you don't want to. thought, no, we said we're doing this together. We've chosen to do the race. If I can run, I want to run. I needed to take the walk breaks, but I wanted to run. And that's what I really liked this year because it was hot.
I hadn't done the training and it was really hard work after four hours. I was just running on fumes basically. But I kept on pushing because it was a race. So it doesn't matter that we weren't going quick. Some people possibly could have walked quicker, I don't know. But we started quite early on.
And yet there were people we were passing at the finish who must have been, you know... a lot further ahead of us at some point and then we were overtaken at the end. And it's not been funny but I, as a visually impaired athlete, I like that aspect of it because it means I'm managing to compete with people on an equal footing. It doesn't matter if the person is walking or running fast or I'm, you know, it's not a race for sighted people. It's got all sorts of people in it. And generally I'm competing against myself, but just the fact that there are people without a sight impairment that I'm managing to beat in the race just means my sight hasn't got the better of me. And I think that's one of the reasons that I've kept doing it. It's my way of fighting against my sight loss, or at least that's why I kept going. And I'm, in a strange way, I enjoy it.
The race itself is hard work. Sometimes the running is hard. when I run with people from Achilles, we have volunteers who look after the bags, look after my guide dog, run around with us. And it might be a different person each week. But they're just giving up their time to do that. The same with park run. And I just think that's fantastic.
If people are giving up their time and talking with you, what else could you... You can put up with quite a lot of pain with the running or put quite a lot into it when people are willing to do that just so you can participate. It's huge. You feel part of something, you feel seen.
For me that's just, it's hard to put into words the difference that makes when people are just going out of their way to do something that's helpful. Volunteers in Thriving.
Mathias Alberton (33:19)
I have a question for you. The question is, in preparation of next year, say, in preparation of the future, in preparation of another marathon, what would you do differently or improve or change altogether? Is something more related to the training? Or the candelarization of the training? Or is about this repeated theme that you pointed at, which is the goal?
Andrew Jones (34:02)
Several things. I would try and focus more on getting, making sure I'm getting enough sleep. I've been conscious at times that my sleep's never generally bad, but it's no good doing lots of training if you don't sleep enough to recover from it. My nutrition is quite good, so I'm not worried there. But sleep would be one thing. In terms of my strength work, one of the things I picked up working with a physio was I've been, my strength work that I've been doing, I've been doing goblet squats and dead lifts, but they're not single leg exercises, and yet running is a single leg exercise. You're not jumping, you're on one leg at a time. So I would focus more on single leg movements.
And I think try and get the right balance with my strength training and my running and sleep and other things that takes account of the recovery that I might need that's changing as I get older. So when you're a teenager, you can do whatever you like, go to bed, get up in the morning and do it all over again, almost without seemingly a need to recover. But I turned 53 last week, I can't do that anymore. And that's been a hard lesson.
Over the summer, one of the things from last year's marathon was I needed to do more strength training and last year I didn't manage to fit it in, I tried. So this year I backed off after I did last year's marathon backed off some of my running, so I was running three times a week, and then tried doing some of my strength training, and I tried doing more park runs. And over the summer, I went with my son to park run, I think it was seven out of eight weeks we managed. And during that period and just after, I got something like seven out of my 10 faster park run times. And yet I started park run, what, eight years ago or something?
But at the same time, my long runs were getting longer and I ended up running myself into the ground. I wasn't particularly ill with it, but my times weren't getting quicker. I think I possibly picked up a bit of the cold, basically I'd done too much. So my runs were like Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. So although it was only three times a week, they were all close together.
So the balance wasn't quite right. And as I said, that's part of what I like because there's so many things you can look at. And in a way, I'm not going to the Olympics or the Paralympics or going to, you know, it... I'm not breaking any records. This is just about seeing what I can do and feeling for myself that I've done okay. I'm also trying to look at not quite necessarily longevity, but living well as I get older.
So if I do marathons, I want to do them advisedly. That is not to the point that I'm doing my body harm or getting myself injured in a way that's going to hurt me in the long term. I want to keep running for a long time, which is the other reason why I'm doing the strength training.
So it's just trying to get the right balance. And I think the last thing that I think is really making a difference to me at the moment is this feeling that I'm managing to positively influence my son in terms of being healthy and doing exercise and that makes the world of difference. If I manage to inspire someone else to take up exercise or to do something that makes them more healthy, that would matter to me more than any time-based goal that I could achieve.
Mathias Alberton (39:30)
I think this is a very nice note, I mean, from you. I mean, not only the idea of training to be healthy, but the idea that there is this connection, this bond with your son and that you are transferring something of your behaviors, your life, your passions, your attention to and care about yourself, but as a, let's say as a good standard of living for everyone, for him. So I think this is extremely important. And I think this is, you know, he could be framed as a goal on its own. He doesn't have a time in attached to it.
It is pure quality. It does have no quantity. It's just ⁓ the concept on its own, which is extremely compelling. So I think this is great.
Andrew Jones (40:47)
It's important. I had a conversation with my son a little while back and I was speaking to him about some accidents I've been involved in. And I was talking about having health insurance previously. And I said, well, I took it when I was younger because as my sight got worse, and I still think this to a certain extent, there's a good possibility that I could be involved in an accident. I've been involved in a train accident before. A serious one. And I said I've got the insurance because I was trying to protect myself in case I couldn't work for a period of time.
And the conversation I have with them, basically it was saying in the end, you need to know that if I'm ever killed in an accident, A, it's not deliberate. I like things how they are. But B, I've been doing things to live my life. And if I got killed in an accident, although it's not what I want, it means that I've not sat down just because something's hard or given up because there's a risk. I've balanced the risk and assessed it all, but choose to live. And I just wanted him to know that it was not going to be my choice to, if something went wrong, to... Well, A, to end my life, but B, it was the other way round. I was choosing to live by doing different activities. And I think that's kind of important as well. And blasphemy has had enough hard things, which I won't go into, to kind of get around and deal with. Well, I thought... For me that was important for him to know as well that some of the things they do in terms of exercise and things that other people might think of as daft, they're just me taking part and me trying to have a life and to live life.
But it's important and the impact you have on other people, think, is important. My eyesight's not going to get better, but it doesn't mean that I can't have a life and it doesn't have to be miserable. But in order for that to be the case, you've got to put yourself out there.
Mathias Alberton (43:32)
Indeed.
Andrew Jones (43:52)
You've got to do something and I don't always appreciate that. can be grumpy like everyone from time to time, but most of the time I try and be positive and do something to make my life as good as it can be and have good relationships and leave the world a better place.
I get some of that feedback when I do the running, particularly in the races. Because other sighted runners are running past and saying, you know, well done or... And that makes a difference because it means someone's taken note, there's an acknowledgement that you're doing something. And I think particularly where that comes from my family, it's important.
And that inspires me.
Mathias Alberton (44:55)
Well, I think this is a very good note, closing note. It's a wonderful idea of not only enduring, but also balancing the risk to this idea of choosing to live through, finding new challenges, to explore new ways to exercise, but also to be healthy. It's really an honor to speak with you every time.
I'm really keen in training with you and in keep on learning from you. So for this, I thank you, Andrew, very much for taking part to this episode. As much as I thank everyone who has been listening to the episode. If you do have questions about how to run a marathon, if you're visually impaired or blind, you know who to call.
Give me a ring, give me an email, give me a shout on social media and I will forward your questions to Andrew and we will have another conversation. If you are visually impaired or blind and if you are interested in ⁓ training some ⁓ confidence, posture and overall spatial navigation in social settings with me every Sunday, you are super welcome.
And as usual, you keep in touch.