A WORLD-RECORD breaking athlete has completed his 800th marathon race.

Steve Edwards, a 54 year old amateur North Cotswold Tri and Run club athlete from Moreton in Marsh crossed the finish line at the Great Run Birmingham International marathon to set a new world record.

Mr Edwards set the record for running 800 official marathon races in the fastest average finish time of 3hrs 18min 12sec for each one.

Commenting after his 3:19:39 finish, he said: "That was really tough today, the final quarter mile uphill was a killer, I didn't think I was going to get the sub 3:20 but the commentator and crowd were willing me on.

"I just can't believe I've managed to do it, no-body has averaged under 3hrs 30min for this many marathons so to achieve sub 3:20 is way beyond anything I could have imagined.

"The dedication and sacrifices that I've had to make to achieve this have at times been extremely difficult to sustain.

"I have to thank my wife Teresa from the bottom of my heart, she has been incredibly supportive and sacrificed much herself, we are a team and I couldn't have achieved all that I have without her love and support."

Back in 1988, his initial ambition was to try and set a new world record for running 500 official marathons in the fastest average finish time.

He achieved that record in 2012 but felt he could raise the bar even higher.

He therefore announced his intention to go for the 1000 marathons and along the way see if he could set new records for each century landmark.

So far he's averaged 3hrs 12min for his fastest 500, 3hrs 13min for his fastest 600 and 3hrs 15min for his fastest 700 marathons, all of which are world records.

He has taken on a competitive marathon race on average every 13 days for nearly 30 years and has completed 21,000 miles at a pace of 7min 33sec a mile which doesn't include training mileage.

His last 100 marathons have taken just 100 weeks and his last 200 marathons have taken just 204 weeks.

He has also accumulated 60 marathon race wins, the second most by a British athlete and has completed 100 overseas marathons in 34 countries including 20 capital cities raising over £25,000 for charities in the process.

Mr Edwards works full time as an IT Support Analyst and readily admits that fitting in all the training and racing has been extremely difficult especially in the last few years. "As I've got older, I'm finding it's taking me longer to recover and my finish times have slipped a little.

"It can be so mentally and physically draining, there's days when I get out of bed wondering how on earth I'm going to run one mile at that pace let alone twenty six."