Liam Dee: The Art of Endurance and Why Marathons Are Not for Everyone

Liam Dee is one of the UK’s most recognisable runners. With his trademark mustache and ear piercing, he’s hard to miss. Especially as he’s often pushing the pace at the front of races in the unmistakable black and white stripes of his club, Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers. 

The first victory listed on his Power of 10, an encyclopedic results database that is the bible of UK running stats, is from 2009: As an under 15, he won the Metropolitan League, one of the UK’s most prestigious cross country leagues. 16 years later, at the opening Met League fixture of this year’s season, he won again.

Longevity is an underrated talent in running. If you ask most runners at 13 if they’ll still be running 16 years later the most likely answer would be a firm “no.” But Liam had the perfect role models from the very start: Both his parents represented Great Britain at the very highest level – his mum won a European indoor 3000m silver medallist and his dad ran at World Indoors – so running was woven into his life, and that of his two younger brothers, from the day he was born.

Liam is one of the UK’s most recognisable runners.

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“Oftentimes my dad would be like, ‘Oh, I'm going to the track for a session’,” recounts Liam. “We’d go and watch the runners run around the track and dig around in the long jump pit or something like that, probably not very sanitary!” 

Liam officially joined the club he still represents, Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers, at 12, with his two younger brothers following quickly in his footsteps, and it was there that Liam faced the first real test of his staying power. 

“Once I joined the club and I wasn't winning everything, I think that actually really helped me to think, ‘oh, you can get better by training and you can get better. I want to be at the front of that race so I'm going to keep going.’”

Liam has stayed true to that pledge to himself. Now 29, after a stint in the NCAA at Iona College and a few years living in New York City, he’s back in the UK and as fast as he’s ever been – he started this year with a 29:16 10K PB on the roads. 

“The big shift that I had to make post-college,” says Liam. “Was that you don't have to do this and you can do it because you love it and if you don't love it, why would you do it? And to me, I think that's the thing that keeps me going regardless of work. I do this for myself.” 

As soon as Liam starts talking about running, it’s clear that he’s a true student of the sport with a deep reverence for its traditions and history. He currently works at RunLimited, a popular new-wave running store in London, and he also coaches alongside his own training. 

But he’s also not immune to those runs many of us are familiar with, when we wonder whether it’s all worth it. 

“I do have those days where I'm out halfway through a long run and I'm like, I hate this. What am I doing? Or early morning before work on a Sunday, it's dark in the winter and I'm like, why am I doing this? This is horrible. I'm not enjoying a single step, I'm not having a single positive thought.” 

But what he’s built over the last 16 years isn’t just physical stamina. 

“It's that mentality of – and I don't like speaking in this sort of stoic fitness bro kind of way – but it's just keep showing up and keep just doing it.” 

The quiet companionship of his brother, whether he’s sharing miles by Liam’s side or supporting him from the sidelines, is also an important antidote on the days he starts to have doubts. Running is still a family affair. 

“He's been injured for a long time this year and he's driven with me to most races that I've done without me having to say, ‘Oh, would you mind coming?’ He will just be like, ‘Oh, me and Liam are going to this race’. Which has been really, really huge.” 

When racing starts to feel like it’s not worth the effort, Liam’s brother is there to remind him that it is. Not through words, but simply through being on the sidelines, giving Liam someone to race for. 

“We are not having deep conversations as brothers, that's never been our relationship. But I think we're just on the same wavelength of understanding, which has been massive.”

Liam loved the scene in New York: The glitz and glamour of the big road races and the prestige of what he and some friends dubbed the ‘US Road Racing Classics”, but the UK club scene was one of the things he missed the most. 

“I was really excited to get back to the roots of running cross country,” he says. “It was the start of 2024, and the national ended up being canceled in the end, but I wanted to run so much that I booked flights to come home specifically to run that race and I think that says something about the heritage that we have here.” 

That club heritage has been an important part of his motivation now he’s back home permanently. 

“I'm lucky I run with Shaftsbury, as we've got a good competitive team,” he explains. “I was thinking, running around the National, ‘just keep going’. Your team needs the points so just keep running. Even though I wasn't having any personal success and I didn't have a great day, it was nice to have that.”

Through years of running, Liam has built up physical and mental endurance.

Having run in the NCAA, Liam has experienced perhaps the most close knit team environment that exists in running, but since graduating, he’s sought out scenarios that create that same feeling of connection. In London, he does most of his hard workouts with Cottage, an informal group of many of the city’s best amateur runners meets weekly at Battersea Park. 

“In college it feels like people have to be there to a certain extent. You sign onto the team, you join the team and you've committed to four years of that, whereas now, we've all got jobs, we're all working, we don't have to do it, but we still do it,” Liam explains. 

“I think it is really special where it's like, okay, you're not tied to anything. You don't have to do this, we just want to, it's really special.”

Growing up, Liam’s dad coached him and his brothers, so when Liam returned to the UK, it was natural for that relationship to resume, but more recently Liam started coaching himself. 

“Ultimately it was just too much of like, ‘okay, where's our line in the sand of dad relationship coach relationship?’” Liam explains. “He was also on the same page with that, to protect the true relationship, our father-son relationship.” 

But it’s the lessons his dad taught him that he still finds himself returning to. 

“His big thing was always about effort. It's not necessarily about pace, it's about effort and how you feel on a given day. And that has stayed really consistent throughout my training.”

Having honed his ability to dial in to effort, a key skill for any marathoner, it seems that the marathon would be the most likely next challenge for Liam, especially after he clocked a half marathon PB of 64:43 last year in Valencia. But is it? 

“I get asked that question almost every day, genuinely almost every day and I've always said, no, I'm not moving to the marathon anytime soon. I can absolutely see the appeal. I go to watch the majors [...] but I don't want to do it. I don't think it's for me, I don't know if I have the mental approach for the marathon down. I think you just got to run through a wall for a marathon and I dunno if I can do that.”

Watch Liam run or race, and it’s immediately apparent that he isn’t lacking grit. In fact, quite the opposite: he hangs on doggedly in sessions, but you won’t find him bragging post-session about his splits. He just gets the work done without drama.

Instead, what he sees in the marathon is that it demands everything an athlete has to give, and more. As a true student of the sport, he respects it with the reverence it deserves, and it’s that respect that will likely make him great at it if he ever feels ready to invest in the distance. 

But in the meantime, he’s got his heart set on his first love: the track. 

“The last three years I've kind of gone and done a bit of everything. I've just said yes to stuff, and just said,’ yeah, that'd be really cool to do’. But I think I missed the track. Something about that has always been where my strengths lie as an athlete and there's something different about running around the track you cannot hide that I missed.” 

The key to Liam’s longevity isn’t some fancy training formula or new technology, it’s something far more simple: Do what you love.

High performance running shoes like the CEP OMNISPEED BOWTECH supports him during his runs.