On the first weekend of May 2017 I’m going to have a second attempt at becoming the first person to circumnavigate the M25 motorway non-stop, on foot. The walk will be approximately 160 miles and I hope to complete it in under 48 hours without sitting down at any time between when I start and when I finish.
I’m doing the walk to raise money for Limbless Association, a London based charity that provide support to people who have lost one or more limbs, and the people who care for them.
I consider myself very lucky to be able to walk the distances that I do. I have two good legs and two good arms, but not everyone does, which is why I have chosen to support Limbless Association in 2017.
In March 2016 I attempted to walk non-stop around the M25 motorway when I raised money for Sport Relief, and whilst I managed to complete the walk, I didn’t do it non-stop. You can read about last year’s walk here, but as a quick summary, I started at 2pm on the afternoon of Friday 11th March and went well until it good dark. Overnight the temperature fell and I suffered in the cold. By Saturday night I couldn’t face another night walking in the cold and after 32 hours I sat down (lay down) for the first time, and at 34 ½ hours I had had enough and I quit. I had completed just over 120 miles at that stage. On Monday morning I decided I was fully recovered and went back to where I had stopped, resumed walking, and finished at 7am on Tuesday morning.
This year I’m making a few changes that will hopefully ensure that I can achieve my goal.
Firstly, I will be starting at 8am on Friday 5th May which means that I can get a full day (50+ miles) before nightfall. Doing the walk in May hopefully also means warmer weather, but nothing is guaranteed when it comes to English weather!
Secondly, I’m going to walk anti-clockwise. You might not think that will make a difference which way I walk, but it means that by the time I get to Saturday afternoon/night, I’ll be walking through countryside that is more familiar to me. I’ve done a reasonable amount of walking and cycling on the southern side of the M25 and mentally, it will make a big difference walking in an area I know rather than somewhere I have never been before when I am struggling through the last 50 or 60 miles.
Lastly, I have mapped out a new route which is 99% on roads that I have been able to check via Google Maps street view. Last year I mapped out the course using Google maps but a lot of the time I found myself walking on muddy trails and down narrow alleyways that my support crew couldn’t drive down. There are only two small parts that are on trails and I will walk them at some stage between now and May to ensure that I know the route in advance. I’m also going to rely on an electronic map on my phone more this year than I did last year (when I had printed maps that I couldn’t see clearly due to tiredness), which will hopefully prevent me getting lost too much. Last year the walk ended up being 177 miles when I had mapped it as 165 miles – I got lost more than a few times. This year’s route should be 160 miles.
As with last year I have support from Fitbit, who will be providing a Fitbit Charge HR or Charge 2 (you can choose from one of the Fitbit’s shown below) as a prize to someone who makes a donation. To enter the prize draw simply make a donation via my Just Giving page. To increase your chances of winning, make a donation AND share at least one of my promotional posts on facebook or twitter, so please keep an eye out for these.
Make a donation and go in the draw to win one of these Fitbits.
Please click the ‘just giving’ link below to make a donation. Limbless Association will appreciate even the smallest donation.
Lastly, if you’ve got nothing better to do on the first weekend of May, and would like to be a part of my support crew for a part or all of the walk, please let me know. All help will be greatly appreciated.
Update:
On the Thursday before Easter Joel Clark, Funding & Communications Officer for Limbless Association interviewed me about the walk. Given that the walk is all about walking around the M25 motorway, we decided what better place to do the interview than the M25 itself!
April saw the start of my racing season (5 races between 20th April and 26th August totaling over 1,000 miles in distance) with the Dublin to Belfast Ultra on the 21st and 22nd. It was good to finally put all the winter and early Spring training to use, even if the race didn’t go as well as I had hoped, and I’m looking forward to my summer racing – with some seriously long walks coming up!
Group photo at the start – outside the Guinness Brewery in Dublin
In the first half of April I completed my two month build up with a 50+km walk on each of the first two weekends, and then eased up the training through to the Dublin race.
And after Dublin to Belfast I had a complete week of rest, and that was pretty much it for the month.
Total mileage for April was 431km (268 miles). Year to date: 1,464km (910 miles).
Looking forward to May:
There won’t be a lot of ‘training’ as such in May. I’ll be taking it easy for the first few days before my attempt to circumnavigate the M25 motorway non-stop as a fundraiser for Limbless Association on the 5th to 7th May. The walk will be about 160 miles and my aim is to complete the walk without sitting down from 8am on Friday morning when I start, until I finish – hopefully with 48 hours.
If you haven’t already donated, please click the here to visit my Just Giving page. Limbless Association is a very worthwhile cause. They support people who have lost one or more limbs through accident, illness, or other causes. Please make a donation, and if you do, you will go in the drawer to one a Fitbit.
Make a donation and go in the draw to win one of these Fitbits.
After the M25 walk I will have another week of complete rest before two easy weeks of walking leading up to my third Grand Union Canal Race – 145 miles from Birmingham to London. Last year I completed the race in 36 ½ hours but I really struggled over the last 45 miles. This year my aim is to maintain a steady pace right through to the finish, and hopefully get under 35 hours for the first time.
And then the month will be over.
As well as walking from Dublin to Belfast, this is where I walked in the London area during April
After a wait of almost six months since my last race I flew to Dublin last Friday morning for the Dublin to Belfast Ultra – 105 miles following the less traveled roads north from Dublin (starting outside the Guinness Brewery) via Swords, Balbriggan, Drogheda, Dunleer, Dundalk, Newry, Maybridge, Corbet Milltown, Dromore, Annahilt, Drumbo, Ballylesson, and finishing outside the Crown Liquor saloon in Belfast.
As usual for a ‘running’ race of this distance, I was the only walker although most/all ultra runners usually walk during a race of this distance – especially on a hilly course. And this race had some massive hills, especially in the last third of the race.
Unlike other ‘running’ ultramarathons that I have competed in, I was left behind from the very start. Usually there are some slower runners at my walking pace (about 7:30/km or 12:00/mile pace) but I had to walk the first 2km 2 minutes faster than I expected to, just to keep the last of the runners in sight. Not knowing the route out of Dublin I wanted to keep the runners in sight rather than having to rely on the maps we were provided, or the map I had downloaded to my cellphone. My map reading skills aren’t the best, especially when walking at the same time, and I didn’t want to get lost too early into the race.
Once out of Dublin though, we followed the R132 road for most of the journey through to the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland so getting lost wouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Group photo at the start – outside the Guinness Brewery in Dublin
Last place at 15 miles:
Checkpoints were roughly every 15 miles and I arrived at the first checkpoint almost exactly 3 hours into the race. I was still in last place but as I arrived at the checkpoint, two runners were just leaving. My plan for each checkpoint was to spend as little time as possible stopped. I was carrying enough food to get me through the first 30 to 40 miles, and the checkpoints at 40 and 70 miles would have our own ‘drop bags’ meaning that we could supply ourselves with our own food if we wanted, rather than relying on food from the checkpoints.
I decided I would use a combination of my own food and food from the race checkpoints. The plan was to eat only fruit and the occasional biscuit or cereal bar for the first 12 hours before switching to high sugar foods for the remaining 10 to 15 hours (depending on how long the race took – I was hoping for 22 hours in total).
I was wearing my Ultimate Direction SJ Ultra Vest which has become a favourite piece of equipment, and as well as packing it with my food requirements, I had a few sandwich bags tucked in one of the front pockets. The idea being that at each checkpoint all I would need to do is refill my two water bottles and pile a selection of food into a sandwich bag which I would eat while walking. In theory I shouldn’t need to stop for more than 30 to 40 seconds at any of the minor checkpoints.
This also meant that I picked up multiple minutes on some of the runners in front of me each time we got to a checkpoint, and it wasn’t long before I started passing some runners.
Bad Patch from 5 to 11 hours:
Over the last two months I have done a long walk of at least 6 ½ hours each weekend and my longest walk was 100km in 13 ¼ hours, so I fully expected to be able to cover the first 100km through to the border in a similar time.
Sometimes however, things don’t go to plan. I have no idea why, but from about 5 hours onwards I just didn’t feel great. My kilometer split times on Strava show that for the first 38km I was consistently walking in the mid 7 ½ minute per kilometer range and then suddenly I am taking over 8 minutes per kilometer. In fact, the next time I walked under 8 minutes for a single kilometer wasn’t until the 159th km!
I have no idea what went wrong other than perhaps I was suffering from tiredness after a long week at work and less than 2 hours sleep the night before the race.
At 10 hours I switched from listening to podcasts, as I normally do when training and in the early stages of races, to high tempo music. But no difference. I just wasn’t enjoying it. I didn’t want to drop out, but I didn’t want to keep walking either. I was forcing myself to keep walking, and I still had over half of the race to go. I wasn’t looking forward to the next 15 or more hours.
At 11 hours I decided that my problem might be tiredness so I has a caffeine tablet. I hadn’t intended to use caffeine in this race, other than the ‘natural’ caffeine found in Coca Cola, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
I also had the hope that switching to a sugar diet at 12 hours, as per my original plan, would make a difference, but at 11 ½ hours my pace started to improve again. I had slowed to 9 ½ minutes per kilometer and was now back walking 8 ½ minutes per kilometer. Not as fast as I wanted, but I was feeling much better.
The border:
I celebrated reaching 12 hours with half a bottle of Coke and a chocolate bar, but I had only covered 86km (53 miles) – well short of the 90km (for an average race) to 95km (for a good race) that I was hoping for.
I was feeling good though. It was 11pm. I was passing the occasional runner and getting cheered on by their support crews from time to time. I was having fun.
The border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland was approximately the 100km mark and I expected to get there at around 13 hours give or take, but instead my watch showed 14 hours and 7 minutes. This race was going to take me longer than I had expected and I even started to wonder whether I had been overly optimistic in booking my flight home for 30 hours after race-start.
I was expecting to see a sign telling me that I was now in Northern Ireland, but unless I missed it, the only indication was that the mileage signs were now in miles, not kilometres.
The Newry Canal:
Until we arrived in Newry the race had been entirely on the road, and most of that was on the R132 road which wandered up the country through small towns along the way. When we arrived in Newry we started walking along the canal which eventually moved away from the road – and the street lights/car lights. Fortunately I have a good strong head torch, because it was a cloudy night, and without a head torch I would have been in trouble.
Problem: The battery on my head torch was almost completely drained and the torchlight kept flashing to indicate that the battery would soon be drained.
I arrived at the 70 mile checkpoint in 10th place at about 16 hours (3am) and the good news was that the officials at the checkpoint said we could either follow the road for the next few miles, or continue along the canal path. I elected to follow the road as I could do this reasonably safely without a head torch, and could let the head torch recharge via a USB charger while I walked.
By the time I headed back on to the canal path my head torch was charged enough to get me through the reminder of the night and I enjoyed the last bit of flat terrain that we would see for a while.
I hate hills. But as a walker competing against runners, hills are a great equaliser. They slow runners down much more than walkers, and over the next 20 miles or so, after leaving the canal path, I gained more ground and passed a couple more runners on a very hilly course – either up or down with not a lot of flat.
GPS Tracking:
All competitors were carrying GPS trackers which provided great insight into where everyone was. I started using it as a source of information. Whilst it wasn’t 100% up to date, only being updated every few minutes, I was able to use my cellphone to see roughly where a runner was and measure how much time it took me to get to that point. Then I would repeat and see if the time was increasing or decreasing.
Soon after daylight I was up to 6th place and we were on to the final long drag along the busy A1 road up to Belfast. My motivation was the GPS Tracker but I wasn’t closing the gap on the two runners who were in 4th and 5th place. Both were about 10 minutes ahead of me. I was checking the GPS tracking via my phone on a regular basis but the gap wasn’t closing.
With about 15km to go we left the A1 and moved on to suburban roads again the gap was still 10 minutes and I was walking about 8 ½ minutes per kilometer. I remembered how I had managed to pick the pace up significantly over the last 3km in the Privas 6 day race last year. It was a case of mind over matter. Could I do the same in this race? I thought we had about 10km to go and if I could pick the pace up to 7 ½ minutes per kilometer, maybe I could catch one or both of the runners in front of me.
The race to the finish:
It wasn’t long before I had not only improved my pace to 7 ½ minutes per kilometer, but continued to improve my speed into the low 7 minute range, and then I saw the 5th place runner. He was struggling. He was walking and jogging with a friend (pacer) and when he saw me approaching he started to run again. He ran for maybe 50 meters then stopped to walk. I knew that I had him and picked up my speed even further.
No sooner had I passed him, and I saw the 4th placed runner. He was on the left hand side of the road and I was on the right. He was walking slowly, and I was walking fast. I tried to stay hidden behind cars, etc, but he saw me and started running. I picked up the pace even more, putting in a 6:50 kilometer, passed him and kept the pace hard to open a gap.
I thought we were almost finished but on checking the map on my phone I realised that we still had about 4km to go. According to the tracker, 3rd place had already finished and the gap back to 5th and 6th was increasing, so I held a steady pace through to the finish, arriving at the Crown Liquor saloon (finish) 25 hours and 3 minutes after starting the race in Dublin.
I had walked the last 10km in 73 minutes 31 seconds, only 3 seconds slower than the first 10km. Once again, I had taught myself a valuable lesson – that ultra-distance races are all about mind over matter. 90% of the race is mental, and the other 10% is in the head 🙂
My top 10 km splits from the race
Next year the Dublin to Belfast Ultra becomes the Belfast to Dublin Ultra – we get to do it all again, but in reverse direction! I can’t wait.
And watch out for my next event in which I will be attempting to circumnavigate London’s M25 motorway non-stop on foot to raise money for Limbless Association. The walk starts at 8am on Friday 5th May and you can donate via my Just Giving page here.
I’m doing the walk to raise money for Limbless Association, a London based charity that provide support to people who have lost one or more limbs, and the people who care for them.
In March 2016 I attempted to walk non-stop around the M25 motorway when I raised money for Sport Relief, and whilst I managed to complete the walk, I didn’t do it non-stop. You can read about last year’s walk here, but as a quick summary, I started at 2pm on the afternoon of Friday 11th March and went well until it good dark. Overnight the temperature fell and I suffered in the cold. By Saturday night I couldn’t face another night walking in the cold and after 32 hours I sat down (lay down) for the first time, and at 34 ½ hours I had had enough and I quit. I had completed just over 120 miles at that stage. On Monday morning I decided I was fully recovered and went back to where I had stopped, resumed walking, and finished at 7am on Tuesday morning.
As with last year I have support from Fitbit, who will be providing a Fitbit Charge HR or Charge 2 (you can choose from one of the Fitbit’s shown below) as a prize to someone who makes a donation. To enter the prize draw simply make a donation via my Just Giving page. To increase your chances of winning, make a donation AND share at least one of my promotional posts on facebook or twitter, so please keep an eye out for these.
After a wait of almost six months since my 
The border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland was approximately the 100km mark and I expected to get there at around 13 hours give or take, but instead my watch showed 14 hours and 7 minutes. This race was going to take me longer than I had expected and I even started to wonder whether I had been overly optimistic in booking my flight home for 30 hours after race-start.
