The year is 2014. A Saturday morning in September and 21-year-old Alex Leprêtre is emitting a radiant glow. Not from the sun beaming over his head but the funnel which he’s heading down.
Another outing at Oak Hill parkrun, the number one barcode in his hand and a new personal best of 17:22. As he takes a moment to breath Leprêtre receives a tap on the shoulder from an unfamiliar face.
John Clark introduces himself as a team manager of Barnet & District AC. Leprêtre should come down and experience some club running for himself.
A couple of months later and the trainee solicitor obliges, heading down to New Barnet Leisure Centre for some laps around the Victoria Recreation Ground. Barely two sessions in and an offer to try some cross country that Saturday afternoon.
Met League beginnings
Once more Leprêtre obliges:
“I didn’t even think cross-country was a thing for adults at the time, it was just something you did at school.”
Leprêtre turns up to Claybury for his debut at the Met League. As he walks to the Barnet area he passes a big gazebo with music pumping out.
“That’s Highgate, they’re always doing that kind of thing.” a companion says, not hiding a lacing of bitterness.
Leprêtre finishes third for his club, just under five minutes behind race winner Norwegian Audun Nordveit. He secures 111th position.
“It was great fun, I never really looked back.”
Leprêtre’s next few years would see him experience the National and Southern Cross Country for the first time. Road Relays, Middlesex County Championships Leprêtre would throw himself into all that the club scene had to offer.
Gradually chipping away at his times, Leprêtre remembers being overjoyed when he finished 24th at the Wormwood Scrubs Met League in December 2016.
“I remember people telling me that the winners of the Met League were these great runners who have run for GB. I think Richard Goodman was probably winning it at the time. He was a GB international. So you’re just seeing yourself getting closer and closer to someone who is an international. And for someone who started relatively late in their career, you know, that’s not something that you’d even think of.”
Black and white
In 2018, Leprêtre moved to Highgate, where he has lived ever since.
“I think on one of my first runs around Highgate, Rob Wilson, the cross-country captain at Highgate Harriers, left a comment saying along the lines of, I think you should start training with us now.”
When Leprêtre was climbing the ranks of the Met League, invariably Highgate were the team at the top.
For the first time Leprêtre began to receive a detailed training plan, one devised by Night of the 10,000m PB’s organiser Ben Pochee. Instead of training mostly alone he grew used to battling another athlete enjoying somewhat of a breakthrough period.
Round Wormwood Scrubs, Welwyn Garden City and the rest Leprêtre and Roger Poolman chased each other through the mud. Two training partners continuing to surprise themselves.
Leprêtre a breakthrough fourth place at the 2019 South of England Cross-Country one of his last under the Barnet vest. Poolman two seconds and one place behind.
International selection
Most athletes at some point reach some sort of plateau, a slowdown in their incremental progression. Whilst like any athlete Leprêtre has endured some difficult results, he is yet to find that ceiling.
Breaking 14 minutes for 5k at the 2022 Podium Under the Lights he ran 28:53 to take the Telford 10k title in December last year. Again that day it was a Highgate teammate in Jacob Allen who chased him home.
Twice he’s been a runner-up at the South of England Cross Country with a National best of 12th. He’s represented England at the Copenhagen Half and the Valencia 10k where he nudged his best lower to 28:51.
And in 2023, although disappointed in aspects of his performance he finished second in the Championship race at the London Marathon in 2:15:01. Only 2018 Boston winner Yuki Kawauchi lay in front.
It was some improvement on his 3:03 best from 2014, a time that drew no little humour from his Highgate teammates.
“I’d like to still think there’s more to come. But I am finding that each step up is that bit harder to get to. It requires that bit more work. Like before when I started running it was just a case of upping the mileage a bit and getting better. But now I’m hitting 100 miles a week when I’m in the depth of training. I can’t really go much more than that without not working full time. So it’s about the things around training as well. It’s ensuring that when I do my sessions I’m well rested and I can do quality sessions.”
More difficult of course when you work long weeks as a lawyer. Leprêtre recalls February, where he had a remote hearing in Singapore. His days starting at 1am, he would not finish till 9am.
“I think you’ve only got one pot of energy, and whether it’s work or running, they both take it out of you.”
Not exactly conducive to training as an elite athlete but he’s adamant there is room to grow.
The 2026 Commonwealth Games marathon seems an obvious target.
“to be able to do that whilst working full time, I think it’s kind of a recognition of the hard work that you’ve put into it.”
For all Leprêtre’s success there remained one achievement he had yet to unlock. 29 Met Leagues ran, he was an international before he was a Met League winner. The best to have never won a race in the cross-country league, his Highgate teammates were quick to remind him.
That changed finally in November 2022. Running round the mud of Wormwood Scrubs, the prison guards the park with a tired Linford Christie Stadium lurking beneath. Glamour isn’t a word you’d lurch to.
Leprêtre slogged his way round his 30th Met League, moving away from the pack and his teammates before entering a funnel once more. A warm November day, Leprêtre felt a familiar radiant glow.
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Featured image by Mark Hookway
