After a combination of bad luck, illness and injury halted his impressive progress, the British runner talks about how he plans to become a force again on the global distance running stage.
Emil Cares has some lofty goals for the next few months. If the London Marathon in April goes well, he sees no reason why he can’t run “a bit faster” than Mo Farah’s British record. Then comes a double 10,000m bid this summer at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the European Championships in Birmingham, where medals are not out of the question.
But when Keires really strips down to his core ambitions and reveals what he really wants from athletics in 2026, it’s clear. he just wants to compete.
“That’s what sport is all about,” he says. “To compete, achieve results and enjoy it, which is the opposite of what happened to me last year. I just want to race there regularly. If I do, I think it will go well.”
For a while, the 28-year-old was touted as Britain’s next male star. the man was about to take Farah’s mantle as a truly world-class athlete. After an impressive sixth-place marathon debut in London 2023, it was his performances over 26.2 miles the following year that suggested this was a runner who could break into the mainstream.
In just his second year specializing in the distance, he finished third in the London Marathon in 2:06:46 to overtake Farah on the British all-time list, before finishing fourth in Paris when he posted the best Olympic marathon performance by a British male for two decades.
When Cairess was announced for the 2025 London Marathon, it was expected that Farah’s national mark of 2:05:11 would soon be consigned to history. But then came a run of bad luck that appeared with frustrating frequency. “It’s been a pretty disappointing year,” says Keires.
The problems actually started in late 2024 when he contracted tonsillitis at a training camp in Kenya. When he returned to the field after the break, his Achilles then began to give him problems, and the impact resulted in pain in his hamstring, the part of the body that, simply put, connects the calf muscle to the leg bones. “I tend to have niggles when I take breaks and then come back,” Keires says.
The problem lasted longer than initially expected and, unable to run throughout January, February and early March, it became clear that his hopes of a third London Marathon were over.
The smooth months that followed included a 10km race in Laredo, Spain, and a 10,000m victory at the British Championships, where she clocked a personal best of 27:27.95, despite running most of the race alone. Then came a nasty elbow infection that knocked him out of a number of key summer training weeks. Arriving at the marathon start line at the Tokyo World Championships in September, she suspected she was underprepared.
“I didn’t really have the background because I missed the London (marathon) meet,” he explains. “The training for the marathon was completed in a very short period of time. I think by the time I got to Worlds I had had some good sessions and was in pretty good shape. But for a marathon, you need to have long training. When I hit the 20 mile mark, I didn’t have the conditioning that I usually have.”
The result was the first DNF of his athletics career as he stopped just 2km from the finish line, overwhelmed by the hot Japanese temperatures and humidity.
“If it was a good race, I think I would have done well,” he says. “But the heat, combined with the lack of marathon-specific training, got to me. So it didn’t end well. I have never finished a race in my entire life. I was just too hot, so I wanted to stop more than finish. I was more disappointed not to do well than not to finish.”
Despite the big disappointment ending a “really disappointing year”, Keires believes a difficult 12 months should still be beneficial in the long run.
“It’s been tough, but it’s not the worst case scenario I’ve had a stress fracture or been really behind on things,” she says. “The injury at the start of last year wasn’t ideal, but other than that I’ve been really consistent. I’ve still had some pretty good months of training under my belt and most weeks have gone well. Even though I didn’t get great results, I definitely feel like I’ve made progress. I just need a little luck.”
Making his first public appearance since failing to finish in Tokyo, Keires stopped again at the Valencia Marathon in early December. This time an early finish was planned, with Cairess working the pace of a group of athletes aiming for a 2:06 finish through 30km. Feeling so good at the moment, he then slowed down a bit, allowing fellow British athletes Alex Yee and Phil Sesemann to fasten his coats before completing the day’s 36km.
His exploits helped Olympic triathlon champion Yi to a remarkable time of 2:06:38, pipping Keires to third place in the British all-time rankings.
“We’re in the same school year, so we’ve been competing against each other since we were 13 or 14,” said Keires, of Yee. “I have known him for a long time. For only his second marathon, it was truly impressive. Obviously there’s more there.”
Most importantly for Keires, the run was a big boost ahead of his upcoming marathon comeback in London.
“I was pleased because I felt quite comfortable,” he says. “I knew if I was in good enough form in Valencia I could build on that for London. That was the rationale behind it. making sure my specific marathon fitness is close to where it needs to be before I start the actual training.
“Basically, I just didn’t want to run the whole thing because I thought it would affect my training afterwards. I could do more, but I wanted to be consistent with my workouts. I didn’t want to get carried away.”
With illness scuppering his plans for last month’s Valencia 10km race, his competitive return is set for the Malaga Half Marathon in March, before finally making a delayed assault on Farah’s marathon on the streets of London. At an as-yet-unconfirmed pace, he expects to join a race-day group aiming for a halfway mark between 61:40 and 62 minutes. Keep up that pace and he should be able to chip away at Farah’s best time, which was set when he won the 2018 Chicago Marathon.
“I feel like I can run a bit faster (than the British record),” Keires said. “My previous runs in London have been solo. I’ve had pacemakers, but I haven’t really run with any other athlete, which isn’t the most enjoyable or best way to run. Hopefully this year I can be in a good group and run as fast as I plan to. You just have to hope the training will pay off.
Regularly running the London Mini Marathon in its youth, the race holds a special place in Caires’ heart; “This is the only race in my career that I would really like to win. Aside from the Olympics, London is definitely the race that any British marathoner really aspires to.
READ MORE. Cairess will beat Farah’s British record
Whether that’s a realistic goal this year likely depends on the strength of his competitors, with 16 men running a marathon faster than 2:04:30 in all of 2025. Keires says “it’s been a couple of years since I’ve really been at my peak”, suggesting 31 or 32 could prove his optimum age. However, he insists that he has “advanced enough in my training that I can perform really well now”.
His average of 215km to 230km (about 130-140 miles) per week is unlikely to rise much higher for the rest of his career, but he believes the opportunity for improvement comes from the ability to be more consistent with fast long training sessions.
Sessions since 2022 have been set by Italian octogenarian Renato Canova, who has guided dozens of athletes to Olympic and world medals. Although Canova’s ill health means the relationship is now mostly over the phone, Keires still sees his coach when he travels to Italy and, always, to camps in Kenya. Otherwise, Keires takes most of his training in his home town of Leeds, where he often runs alongside athletes from the Leeds Talent Center while he sleeps in an altitude tent every night to ensure he “feels more relaxed that I’m not missing out compared to people at altitude”.
No stone was left unturned in the improvement bid. Now, after last year’s tantrum, Keires is just desperate to show off the fruits of his labor. “I don’t do all the training just for training, I do it to get good results.”
The racer is ready to race.
