Josh Kerr's meticulous ritual laid bare in bid for Commonwealth Games gold and Project 222

The Edinburgh athlete’s two-pronged bid for Roger Bannister-style immortality will coalesce across a fortnight next month in London and Glasgow.

Part one is his attempt on Hicham El Guerrouj’s world mile record which has survived for 27 years and stands at three minutes 43.13 seconds. The Diamond League meeting at London Stadium on July 18 will provide the stage for Kerr’s shot at glory. Two weeks later he will look to win gold in a Scotland vest at the Commonwealth Games, something no Scottish male athlete has done on the track since Allan Wells in 1982.

The Glasgow race is also a mile, a welcome return to the spotlight for this most noble of races. Kerr, a keen student of athletics history, knows it is a classic test with a rich record of success for runners from these shores.

When Kerr broke the British record in 2024 (3min 45.34sec), it was Steve Cram’s long-standing mark that he beat. For six years, between 1979 and 1985, the world mile record passed from Sebastian Coe to Steve Ovett, back to Coe, back to Ovett, back again to Coe and then on to Cram. Heady days.

Scotland’s turn

This time it’s Scotland’s turn. Kerr, Jake Wightman and Neil Gourley can all boast world championship medals. All three will fancy their chances in the Commonwealth Mile, but first it’s Kerr’s world record bid.

He is currently holed up in the US, working assiduously with his team to give himself the best chance possible of doing something extraordinary.

“I just want to put my name up against some of the best Brits there have been in the history of the sport and I want to be known as the best miler in history and so that's just kind of the record we have to go after,” he says.

“It's not easy, it's been a really tough camp, doing everything I can to find my margins and, you know, there's not much else that we can do on our end and I'm trying to document that as much as possible as we go into London and then kind of spread that through into the Commonwealth Games. I'm hoping to have a pretty successful couple of weeks.”

Coffee bans, fasting and the daily notebook ritual

The phrase ‘marginal gains’ has become almost a cliche in elite sport but Kerr isn’t bothered about that. He talks of “one percenters”, the little things which, added up, could turn silver into gold, fast times into world records. He has hired a nutritionist and a chef to look after his precise dietary requirements which include fasting for 16-18 hours a week and an eight-day coffee ban before races. He will have one three hours before the race for maximum impact.

Like many top athletes, he takes sodium bicarbonate in gel form “to buffer hydrogen ions and thus delay muscle fatigue”.

Visualisation is also important. In a notebook in his home in New Mexico he uses the same blue pen every day to write “I ran 3.42 at the London Diamond League. July 18th, 2026.” When he has an ice bath, he stays in for exactly three minutes and 42 seconds.

“There are a lot of elements to this that we're just trying to win our one percenters as much as possible and earn it,” he says. “I think it's going to be a very difficult day. It's a tough record, obviously. It's very old but we're just finding techniques and I have a lot of trust in my performance coach that way and, yeah, we're trying lots of different stuff to make sure that my brain and my legs are ready to go.”

Kerr hasn’t been shy about setting out his aims. He announced in April his intention to break the world record, dubbing it ‘Project 222’, with the aim being to complete the mile in exactly 222 seconds at the London Stadium, taking down El Guerrouj’s long-standing mark in the process. The Moroccan set the record in July 1999 in Rome and Kerr currently ranks six on the all-time list with his old foe, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, third on 3:43.73.

It’s arguably the toughest track record to break. Cram, for example, is still in the top ten even though his world record run came 41 years ago. Coe remains in the top 20 (number 16) and Ovett is at 45. Of the new breed, Gourley is 29th and Wightman 31st.

Kerr feels confident he can hit the 222 mark. He knows external factors could derail him but training is going well and he is excited about the twin goals of world record bid and homecoming games.

‘I’m in a really good spot’

“It's been a kind of new process chasing that time,” he says. “For me, it sets up the Commonwealth Games really well.

“I think, you know, back when I was kind of coming through the ranks a little bit, the way that we would normally run it is go out and try and really hard, like a couple weeks like at Monaco, stuff like that, it's kind of what more of my idols were doing and then we'd go into the championships and run really well there.

“Someone like Chris O'Hare springs to mind on that and so, you know, for me, I think it sets everything up really well and it kind of shifts the pressure focus of tactical racing and just allows you to focus on the fitness side of things and then in that two weeks leading into Commonwealth Games, I can then focus on how I would like to race the mile there and it's really cool, it's a mile as well, so it just kind of crosses over.

“But yeah, everything's going extremely smooth, you know, when you call your shot this far in advance, obviously there's a lot of things that can happen and, you know, we're still, three weeks or so out from it but I couldn't ask to be in a better spot for it.

“I mean, there's a difference between having the fitness to go for it and dealing with the variables that kind of come your way and I believe I'm in the fitness for it and so it's definitely on, I just need to handle the variables and, with a little bit of, a little bit of luck on my side, I'm sure I'll be in a really good spot.”

A world-record attempt followed by a home Commonwealth Games could pile pressure on even the most seasoned athlete but Kerr is determined to savour these special moments. At 28, he has accumulated experiences and baubles from around the world, from Olympic medals in Tokyo and Paris to World Championships glory, indoors and out, in Budapest, Glasgow and Toruń. His victory at the World Indoors in 2024 gave him a taste of what it is like to win an international title in Scotland and he believes it will make things easier when he competes next month at Scotstoun, a venue he knows well from his formative years.

Doing myself proud in front of the Scottish crowd

“We have a weird sport where we're only as good as our next race,” he says. “I won a world indoor title a few months ago [in Toruń] and I'm extremely proud of that. And I was very lucky to have the opportunity to race in front of a home crowd for the Glasgow World Indoors in ’24 and really capture that moment and so I feel like I'm in a spot now where I've done myself proud in front of the Scottish crowd and I just feel like I have the ability to go out and do that again.

“I don't feel the pressure of needing to perform in front of that crowd because I know that I have it in me and I've done it before and so it's just following that script as much as I can and, as always, just going out there and giving everything I've got and normally that comes out with a result that I'm proud of. So, yeah, just trying to stay in the moment for each race and both of them individually that I've got coming up are big moments and ones that I'll remember for the rest of my life.

“I mean, my parents are here with me at the moment [in the US] and, you know, we were talking about how fun it's going to be to go back to Glasgow and to go back to Scotstoun and race there. It's like, the amount of times I've raced there and the memories that I've got, it's like proper full circle stuff so it's been really fun as well.”

Kerr’s Commonwealth Games selection was officially announced on Friday when he was named in Team Scotland’s 39-strong athletics team as one of three male milers, alongside Gourley and Wightman. In the countdown to Glasgow and his world record bid, Kerr will continue to document his training and preparation, sharing on social media a journey which could end in almost unimaginable triumph or grave disappointment. He doesn’t care if it gives his rivals an insight to what makes him tick because he has enough self-belief to think he will do it better than any of them.

‘If you want to do what I do, feel free...’

“At heart, I'm documenting it for myself because this is a really tough journey and there's not a better way to be able to look back with future kids or family members in 10 years time. It’s kind of showing an honesty of what it really was like.

“And the other thing is I've worked hard to do everything right and if you want to do what I do, feel free. If you want to come and beat me and do it the way that I do it and work harder, I'm fully okay with that.

“I think the hard work and the determination and the little things that you do day in, day out is what defines your performance and I have absolutely no secrets with that. I think if you want to come and play and train the way that I train, on the track and off the track, and you want to beat me that way then, you know, all power to you.

“I think that's what sport is. It's finding those one per cents and working hard on them. I've been doing it for 10 years so it's going to take a while to catch up but I think it's important to show that whole process and that you can be successful in the sport without doing things the wrong way.

“I think it's important to hopefully be that role model that doesn't have any kind of blemishes on his record and I think that's a really important spot to be in and I take full responsibility for that.”

With two such big targets to pursue, Kerr is unsure whether he will head to Birmingham after Glasgow to take part in the European Championships at Alexander Stadium. The Commonwealth Mile on August 1 at Scotstoun and will bring down the curtain on the athletics programme at Glasgow 2026, with the men’s final followed by the women’s. The Europeans begin nine days later, running from August 10-16, and Kerr thinks it might be a step too far.

“Well, I didn't run the trial and so I haven't spoken to them too much about it,” he says. “It's just kind of one of those things where London and Glasgow are my priorities and then we can maybe have that conversation afterwards if we need to but I can't wrap my head around a third one at the moment.

“We're in a pretty intense camp and to extend it a couple more weeks I think would be tough which is why I didn't end up going to the trials and I'm not asking for a spot without doing the work.

“If it's a situation where athletes aren't qualified and there's no other eligible athletes for it and they ask me to do it then, you know, it can be a conversation but I'm not going to take a position off of someone that's qualified.”

His focus for now is the world record bid and making Project 222 a reality.

“I'll come over to the UK around about a week before [the London meeting] and get the last part of training done over there and I'll have my full squad with me and coaching staff and parents and family and everything so it'll be, I would say, a well-orchestrated zoo. That’s probably the best way to describe what that's going to be like.”