Fed up with ordinaryExtra ordinary is where it's at

Well, that’s it. The run has happened and I can’t believe it’s now all over.

What started as a crazy idea back in September 2009 has finally become reality. And it’s been quite a journey… I’ve gone from not being able to run more than 2 minutes to the shops to completing 141 miles of hard, cross country terrain in 6 days.

Technically, I’ve become an ultra runner. A couple of my runs have been over 28 miles and one even reached 30 miles.

There have been injuries and set backs. I’ve experienced exhilarating highs and depressive lows. My body has been in the most pain I’ve ever known but it has been amazing – something I’ll never forget.

Rich Atkinson, Steven “Smack” McMurray and John-Paul Walker, you are all legends. It’s been an absolute privilege to go on this journey with you and I hope to do something crazy with you again.

I’m currently writing up some of my thoughts from the run itself as I tried to journal throughout the event. I’ll post that up to this blog as soon as can and add photos and videos too.

In the mean time, here’s the triumphant finish into the sea at Whitley Bay

So with only a couple of days to go, I get ill. I’ve been in rude health for the last few months so why now? It’s not fair *stamps feet*.

Anyway, I’m feeling grotty with a cold, and I can cope with that. Running with a cold isn’t great but I can deal with it. However, I’ve also got (if you’re squeamish look away now) pretty bad diarrhoea. This is more worrying as it’s not something I can run with at all really. And I have to try even harder to remain hydrated.

Lemsip for the cold and prunes and dates to “bulk up” my, you know, movements. Let’s see if that does the trick.

Well, here we are in the final days before the run. I can’t believe it’s this week I start.

To say that I’m nervous is an understatement, but not really because of the running. Well, partly because of the running… more like 50-50… let me start again.

I’m not only nervous about the running. Organising the entire thing has been / is being very difficult and it’s starting to take it’s toll. The last couple of days I’ve been having mini panic attacks when I think about something else I’ve forgotten or look at the still large to-do list. It’s been affecting my sleep and my moods. I’ve been more grumpy than usual.

I don’t mind doing the organisation, but getting the balance between being organised and being like people’s mum is hard. I think I’ve failed on various counts and in parts it feels like I’m organising a school trip. It seems nobody else knows where we’re staying, the route we’re taking or even what time we’re leaving on Wednesday.

A lot of the tasks can’t easily be split: the route dictates where we stay, accommodation availability affects the route. It’s not that I need help doing stuff, just that I feel I need to offload frequently so that the others know what I’m doing and so we feel a sense of shared responsibility. I guess that’s it. At present I feel the burden of responsibility. If the route’s wrong, it’s my fault. If the accommodation isn’t booked correctly, it’s my fault. That burden is weighing down heavily at present and I’m not sure what I can do about it.

Meetings of the group have been really hard to arrange. People are very busy. We’ve been limited to an hour, that practically becomes 40 minutes, every few weeks. I’ve struggled with that. Those who know me, will know that, although I’m quite a verbal thinker. Or perhaps you’re more likely to call me gobby! Whatever you call it, I need to talk frequently. But even in this last week, I’ve not been able to get people together for a final briefing. I’m not sure how they’ll find out what time and where we’re leaving from, but at least I’ll be there!

I’m trying very hard to remain calm at the moment but it’s not really working. There’s still so much to do and so little time. If any of you have relaxation tips, I’d love to hear them!

Our full dress rehearsal yesterday was, how shall I put it, interesting…

It was many things: tiring, lots of fun, hot, the most physically tough thing I’ve ever done, a good test of the amount of food we need to carry, and so on. It’s really hard to describe the full range of emotions and feelings that accompany such a mammoth event.

We had planned to do 26 miles but in reality we ended up doing 28.7 miles as we took some wrong turnings here and there. Reading this now you may think that extra 2.7 miles to be insignificant. We’ll, you would be VERY wrong!

All told we were our for about 7 and a half hours, but the last 5 miles took an hour and half, largely due to the pain I was having in my right foot. Obviously, we weren’t breaking any speed records but this wasn’t a marathon (which is primarily flat and on roads), this was a 28.7 mile fell run. We covered some really tough terrain; hills we had to walk up (and down), scrambling over rocky outcrops and plenty of woodland routes littered with badly placed tree roots.

Previously, the most I’d run was about 14 miles so I’m well chuffed with yesterdays run. Rich had run slightly less than me previously, so his effort was even greater.

The run was painful and increasingly hard to push on after about 18 miles. A couple of weeks ago I bruised my right foot by standing on a sharp rock, that injury obviously hadn’t healed fully and after about 20 miles it started to hurt a lot. The last 5 miles were really tough and any downhill took me close to agony.

I’ve got one blister just below my big toe on my right foot, probably due to that fact that I was wearing new shoes. I’d got my Vibram fivefingers KSO Trek the day before and couldn’t leave them at home! They performed really well. The only downside was running so much on roads, but we didn’t plan to do that and they aren’t designed for that so I can’t hold that against them!

Physical hardship apart, I learnt a lot about our run:

• We need more water than we can carry – the route needs to include plenty of places where we can fill up
• We need lots of food when we stop – in our rucksacks we had enough food I feel but when we stop, we need lot’s to carry us over until we can find a suitable evening meal. We finish each day around 5pm but many places don’t serve food until 7pm.
• Sun cream doesn’t work when running – I’d covered myself in factor 30 as I burn easily. When we started running, my face instantly became a horrid mix of sun cream and sweat. Not pleasant. I need to get a buff head covering instead.
• We need to know the route well – we made a couple of errors yesterday and that add extra miles that we don’t need. Also, psychologically, knowing where you are and how far you have left to go makes a huge difference.
• We need more time to do our run – we’d imagined 6 hours would be a good time for 26 miles. Assuming the terrain is similar, we’re going to need more like 7 hours.

Lots to think about really. The run has given us all a massive amount to think about. At this point though I’m not sure if I feel better or worse now I’ve done that distance. On the plus side, I know I can do it. On the minus side, it was rock hard… and we need to do that 6 times in a row!

Okay, I’ve decided, I feel worse. Much worse!

As the tension mounts before the run, we’ve managed to get space in our diaries to do a full dress rehearsal on Sunday.

We’re running 26 (ish) miles from Sheffield to Baslow and back again. You can see our rough route here.

I have to thank the volcanic ash cloud for blocking UK airspace as otherwise RIch would be unable to make it due to being in Norway. But now we’ve a full contingent of runners.

As well as being a test of our fitness (or lack thereof) it’s a chance to work out other things such as how much food do we need? Will we have enough water? Is 6 hours a good pace to aim for? And so on and so forth.

I’d love to say I’m confident that I can do it but the reality is that I’m pooing myself! 26 miles is almost double the furthest I’ve ever run before and I’ve not been running long since my blisters and I’m not sleeping brilliantly and… There are a million and one reasons why this will be hard but I need to keep telling myself that I can do it and if it takes longer than 6 hours, it takes longer. If Eddie Izzard can do it, so can I!

On the plus side, I should be running in my new Vibram FiveFingers KSO Treks! They’ve finally arrived in the UK and I placed my order for next day delivery today. I’m far too excited really, they’re only shoes after all…

As the time for our adventure to start rushes closer, I can feel the nervousness of the group increasing exponentially. From nowhere, the run is suddenly 23 days away. The sense of urgency is palpable and I’m thinking of little else most of the time.

There is still so much to arrange, so much to agree on, so much training still to be done, but time is short. Oh I wish I had a TARDIS!

I am finding myself flipping between absolute conviction that we’ll all do it without issue and utter disbelief that it is possible even to run one cross-country marathon distance in a day let alone six!

We’re all going out to try our first 26 mile run on Sunday. A route to Baslow and back is about right so I’ll finalise a route later in the week. We’re going to leave six hours to do it in and try running with our full packs and have the day as close to the real thing as possible.

I’m scared. Very scared.

26 miles seems such a ludicrous distance. At the moment 16 miles seems doable but even 20 is too far. I need to get out of that mindset, and quickly!

in normal shoes anymore!

To test how my blistered feet were healing I went for a run in my normal, cushioned running trainers. I was cautious about wearing my FiveFingers as I really didn’t want to hinder the healing process (I’ve had far too long out as it is).

Setting off through the park was hard. Nothing to do with the shoes, but not running for three weeks ruins your fitness! Once through the mental barriers, I got into my stride and started noticing pain in my left knee and ankle.

It got slowly worse through the run. By the time I’d finished my 4 miles I certainly wasn’t in agony but it wasn’t pleasant. I also noticed that my thighs were killing me. They were really tired and the next day they felt awful still.

I went out and did the same route in my fivefingers and what do you know? My legs, knees and ankles were fine. No pain, no real tiredness, no hurting blisters.

This is far from a conclusive, scientific test here but wearing fivefingers for the first time changes your gait: you absorb shock using your calves rather than relying on the shoe. Running on cushioned shoes seems to bypass the calves and concentrate effort in the thighs. I’m sure there’s a PhD thesis in there somewhere…

The other day, Smack and I were discussing exit strategies for the run. We’d previously discussed what would happen if one of us was injured and agreed that the rest of the group would ensure they received the help they needed to get to that nights stay and if necessary help them arrange travel home and such like. Unless the injury is very serious, the rest would continue and the injured party would fend for themselves from then on.

So far, so good.

But what if there was no injury? Just someone been very slow? What should we do there?

At first, I thought that one of us would just run (or walk) with them, however slow they went. But is that fair? If I had to walk for 3 days because someone else couldn’t run, I would be really annoyed.

It’s important to realise that we’re all doing this for individual reasons. It’s not a “group” task as such. We’ve all spent so much in terms of time, effort and money. We’ve made huge sacrifices, had to drop things we would normally do to find the time to run, my family have made sacrifices for me.

So, we’ve decided on the seemingly draconian procedure. If someone can’t make the run inside the allotted time (we’re leaving 6 hours available for each run although we hope to do it in less than that) then we ensure they get to the next evening’s stop. After that, they need to decide whether or not they can run faster the next day. If they choose to run on, they do so at their own risk. As in, if they fall behind again, there is no expectation on the others that they will drop back and run with them. The rest of the group are free to run on ahead and leave them behind.

Now, this sounds pretty harsh, I agree, but someone lagging behind will not be left in the middle of nowhere without any means of onward travel. The routes we’re running are only ever a few miles (probably 5 at most) away from a road. The Hadrian’s Wall route even has busses that run along the road pretty close to it.

So although it sounds harsh, I can’t think of another solution to this problem. After all, why should one person failing ruin it for the rest of the group? And they would ruin it… I’ve not put in all this effort only to walk across Hadrian’s Wall.

Obviously, this is a moot point as none of us are going to quit! Normal people walk Hadrian’s Wall, but this is a journey into the extraordinary!

Well, it’s a calendar month until we start running… it’s a bit of an understatement to say I’m nervous. I’m petrified.

This is largely because these final weeks should be about coming to the peak of training. My body should be in prime condition, ready for the 6 consecutive marathons I need to do.

At this point however, I simply have the lyrics from the song “Body Count” in my head… “Shit ain’t like that!”

Ah, the immortal words of Ice T there. That takes me back a fair few years!

Anyway, back to the here and now. I haven’t been running at all for almost three weeks now due to rather painful feet. The blisters I had got infected (they leaked this horrid, white fluid that smelled so bad I wanted to vomit!). I was advised to remove the dead skin, clean them and let the air at them. Well, that worked in terms of the infection but I have a very large patch on both heels without any skin on… or at least that’s what it feels like!

Any attempt at running has been very painful and I’ve been very cautious about making them any worse. I think they’ve recovered enough to run now but we’ll see whether or not that’s the case when I return from a short run later today!

The other problem is that I’ve got pretty out of shape in these three weeks. I’ve been eating at my previous level. I have the appetite of someone running 25 miles a week. I feel like I’ve put on about a stone in weight. I feel really bloated. I think I need to go on a diet before the run itself. Perhaps no alcohol or crisps before the run?

Organisationally, things are coming together well. I have all but one night’s accommodation booked; travel to Ravenglass on the 5th May is sorted (huge thanks to Harry Humphries for the lift); travel home from Whitley Bay is (apparently) sorted too but I’m not sure who is bringing us home; baggage transfer for all but one stop is sorted too.

So, all in all, it’s coming together well but it’s taken ages. I feel like I’ve spent about a full working week organising this thing. It better be worth it!

I can’t believe it’s come round this quickly. It’s 47 days until the run and the organisation is in full swing. Today I’ve booked accommodation for three of the seven nights and somehow that’s made it seem very real indeed!

We had a get-together this morning and discussed some practical things like what do we do if someone can’t continue, what first aid equipment do we need to take and such like.

I’m hit by a mixture of excitement and nausea! Excited that it’s going to be a most excellent adventure. Nauseous that I have to run 150 miles in 6 days.

Booking places has raised a couple of issues though. Such as some places where we’re staying don’t serve food until 7pm but we’re arriving at about 4pm. So we’ll need to ensure that we have enough food with us to last until 7pm. That may sound a bit strange but even running 13 miles I get ravenous. After 26 miles, across Hadrian’s Wall I dread to think what my hunger will be like. I guess there’ll be plenty of sheep grazing nearby if things get desperate…