People ask what the name means, so here it is.
PB is Personal Best. That's the whole idea, and the important word in it is personal.
Your personal best is not my personal best. It isn't your club's, and it definitely isn't the internet's. It's a number, or a feeling, or a distance, or a morning that belongs to exactly one person. The bloke who runs 2:45 has one. The woman who ran her first unbroken five kilometres last Tuesday after two years of not running at all has one, and hers cost her more.
That's not a nice sentiment I'm putting on a tee. It's the actual entry requirement, and the entry requirement is: you have one. That's it. That's the door.
The 3 is the north star. Sub-three — the marathon time a certain kind of runner organises years of their life around. We wear it as a cipher, the way a number stitched on a chest has always meant something to the people who know and nothing to the people who don't.
But let me be careful here, because this is exactly where a brand like this usually gets it wrong.
The 3 is not a standard you have to meet to belong. I'm not sub-three. I may never be sub-three. I'm six-foot-four and I moved like a cart horse for years, and I've made my peace with the arithmetic of that.
The 3 is a direction. It's the acknowledgement that this thing has a horizon, that somewhere out there is a version of the effort that's almost absurd, and that pointing at it is what keeps the rest of us honest. You don't have to reach a north star. That's not what they're for. You navigate by it.
I've seen the other version of run culture — the one where the number on your watch decides whether you're allowed to speak. It's tedious, it's exclusionary, and it produces exactly nothing except people quitting early and quietly.
So: PB-3. Personal Best, and a north star you're allowed to be a long way from.
If you're chasing sub-three, we're for you. If you're chasing your first parkrun without walking, we're for you in precisely the same amount. If the only PB you set this year is going out when it's cold and dark and you really, genuinely did not want to — that counts. That might be the hardest one on the list.
Everyone has a personal best. Come and chase yours.
#ChaseYourPB