The article presents the m+ number, a tool created by Paul Schnell to count his “marathon-plus” efforts. The idea comes from observing hi-vis vests from the 100 Marathon Club, in particular at the Gloucester Marathon (United Kingdom) in January 2020, with sewn-on numbers going up to the hundreds, which he then found hard to believe.
Schnell then looks for a way to count marathon-length efforts “whether they are official races or not”. He explains that, for the 100 Marathon Club, you need to run 100 marathons with verifiable elements such as bib numbers, a start line, a certified course and a result—something that does not match his own practice during the period described.
The context is particularly tied to the COVID-19 year, when his plan “12 marathons in 12 months” is thrown off course. He specifies that, outside of races that may have been able to resume, he had to create his own outings, including 14 solo loops to run a marathon in the woods near his home in Surrey, and a 100k made up of three 20-mile loops from his “basecamp”.
To answer his question, he finds that Strava already contains his data: he has already logged efforts of 26.2 miles or more. He therefore describes a calculation that pulls in these activities, sorts them into “distance buckets” (marathon, 50k, 50-mile, 100k, 100-mile, and beyond), and then outputs a number called the m+ number.
