My last race of 2024 was a second visit to Royan, France for their annual 48 hour race for which they have a category for walkers as well as runners.

I won the race in 2018 and although I absolutely hated the course that year, the opportunity to test myself over two days again, and hopefully make amends for my disappointing DNF in the Gloucester 48 hour race last year and my sub-par performance at the Athens 48 hour race in 2020 (my only other two 48 hour races) was too much to keep me away.

I had also walked within a eight kilometres of my 2018 PB during the first 48 hours of both this year and last year’s six day races, so I felt confident that I could easily beat my 278km PB from Royan 2018 and my main reason for wanting to race over 48 hours was to prove to myself that I could have a strong second day, which has always been my worst day in any race longer than 24 hour.

So my goal was to walk a steady pace for the first 24 to 25 hours, have a short sleep, then walk a strong second day.  I thought 300km was a strong possibility.

Getting there:

To be honest, while the above all sounds positive, I was lacking a little confidence in the lead-up to the race and had a few regrets about entering the race. It was a good idea at the time but not so much now.

When I dropped out of the Gloucester 48 hour race last year I said to myself that I wouldn’t have dropped out if I had a support crew, because I would be letting them down.  So I asked Sarah Lightman, support crew extraordinaire (see my last three six-day race reports) to come as my support person, and Kathy Crilley decided to come with us (and compete in the 12 hour race).

This meant that I couldn’t back out now, and we all met up at Stansted airport late morning on the Wednesday before the Friday race start for what would end up being two flights to France.

We have decided over the years that with all the various airport and rail strikes that France has become well-known for, we will always travel at least one day early, just in case something goes wrong, and it was looking like this strategy was going to prove right today.

Our flight took off on time at 1pm and all was going well until 45 minutes into a 90 minute flight the pilot announced that due to ‘operational issues’ we would be returning to Stansted.  So at the exact time that we should have been landing in La Rochelle (70km north of Royan) we landed back at Stansted airport, London!

Not a good start.

We then sat on the plane for an hour waiting to learn whether we would be flying again or off-boarding.  Secretly, I was thinking, “I’m not going to have to do the race after all”, but after an hour the plane was refuelled and we flew to France for the second time.  This time we landed at our destination airport, collected our rental car and drove to our AirBnB which was located just 300 metres from the stadium hosting the race.

Nutrition:

The following day we found the local supermarket to buy some supplies – I had taken plenty of Carbohydrate sports drink powder and chews but we needed some additional food for the race and also for eating at the AirBnB.  After the groceries were done, we spent the rest of the day resting before going to the stadium to register for the race late afternoon.

One of the reasons we have started staying at AirBnB’s before races, rather than hotels, is that we can cook our own meals and eat good quality food in sufficient quantities in the leadup to the race instead of being reliant on restaurant food, and for this race I was attempting to consume 600 grams of carbohydrate in both the two days before the race.  Cooking your own food makes it easier to calculate the calorie and carb content than eating restaurant prepared meals, and also enabled me to focus on eating only foods with a high carbohydrate concentration.

In the past I have tried to eat plenty of carbs in the two days before a race, but this time I was recording everything I ate and making sure I consumed enough carbs.

I also had a nutrition plan for the race for only the second time ever – the recent Gloucester 24 hour race being the first.  Similar to Gloucester, I intended to consume 25 grams of carbs (about 100 calories) every 20 minutes, alternating between sports drinks and chews.  I thought I would be able to eat like this for the first 24 hours and then transition to real foods after my planned sleep at 25 hours.

I also had some Coke and a few odds and ends in case I needed something else, and Sarah was going to be coming and going during the first day and would then spend the majority of the second day at the track if I needed her – meaning that she would be able to get whatever additional food I needed.

The track:

The race course is a 1,127 metres per ‘lap’ that is 90% on a 400 metre athletics track (three quarters of a lap in lane one, a 180 degree turn and back to near the start in the middle lane, another 180 degree turn, and back along the outside of the track) with a small section outside the track through a long marquee which contain the timing equipment plus athlete’s individual food tables and the aid station where volunteers maintain a continual supply of food and drink throughout the race.

The track surface is not the usual synthetic rubber surface that most athletic tracks have these days. Instead, just like Privas, the track has a cinder/ash/grit surface comprising of very small stones that can kill your feet if they get in your shoes.  Reading my race reports from Privas 2015 (72 hours), 2016, 17 and 18 (all six days) plus Royan 2018 and in all those races I had major problems with blisters caused by the grit getting in my shoes.

Well, after 23 days of walking around those tracks I finally came up with the answer, and as well as wearing gaiters I taped up my shoes so that there was no way any grit would get in.

This worked 100%. I did get a couple small blisters but nothing more than I would get in any other 48 hour race.  I wish I had come up with this idea after my first time at Privas in 2016. It was have saved me many hours of in-race blister treatment/repairs and saved me from a lot of pain in my three six day races on that horrible track.

The race:

The night before the race I had my best ever pre-race sleep – 10 hours!  I woke up at 7am, three hours before race start, thinking that I have absolutely no excuses now after such a great night’s sleep.  I had my usual breakfast – two plates of porridge plus yoghurt – and added a banana and clementine plus 100 grams of carb drink between breakfast and race start.

We headed over to the stadium around 8’ish for final preparations after which I then lay down in my camp stretcher, which I would be sleeping on the following day, to rest until race start.

The weather forecast was good for day one, but rain was forecast for the last 15-20 hours, although fortunately it wasn’t expected to be as bad as 2018 when we had summer for the first 24 hours and winter with rain and strong wind for the second day.  I was prepared for whatever weather we had, with two jackets, a poncho, plus waterproof socks if needed.

This year there were 21 walkers and 30 runners entered in the 48 hour race plus similar numbers in the 12 and 24 hour races starting the following day.  Plenty of other people to interact with over the two days, and with the layout of the course there would never be any boring periods with no one else nearby.

Looking at the field, there were a few walkers I didn’t know, but I was confident that I would win the race if I could walk 280km plus.  Alain Malfondet was probably my main competitor but when we last met at Vallon where I raced 6 days and he competed in the 48 hour race, my 48 hour split was 15+ km ahead of him, so I was confident I could beat Alain.  I was also confident that I would beat all the other walkers whose names I recognised.

I started the race comfortably, aiming for around 8 to 8 ½ minutes per kilometre during the first few hours – with the lap being 1.127km, my aim was 9 to 9 ½ minutes per lap.

The lap distance meant that every nine laps was just over ten kilometres and I passed the first 10km in 1 hour 24 minutes, an average lap time of 9:21, so bang on target.  I was in 7^th place for all of that first 10km but I was feeling comfortable and I was in no rush to take the lead. I figured that I would start moving up the field during the evening and would probably take the lead sometime overnight, but even if I didn’t, I just needed to be in contention after day one so that after a short sleep I could ‘race’ day two.

I felt good, even great, through the first ten hours, and even commented to Kathy or Sarah at one stage that although I hated the course back in 2018, I was “really enjoying” the race.

I wasn’t focused on my place at all, but I did occasionally check the results online via my phone as I walked and at three hours I was slightly over half marathon distance and in 4^th place.  The race results TV screen was so close to the timing mat that by the time our lap times appeared on screen, we had already walked passed the monitor, so unless I wanted to stop periodically, it was easier to monitor the race results via my phone.

Looking at the race results while writing this report I see that I didn’t move up to third place until just after 9 ½ hours (69km) and in all that time I had continued to maintain a steady average pace of 9:22 per lap, and this included six short stops (three wee stops and three short stops for other reasons) totalling three minutes.  Things were going well.

I was 23 minutes behind Alain with Olivier Parazot (someone I didn’t know) in between us, about 6 minutes behind Alain.  But I wasn’t focussed on racing yet, just trying to maintain a steady pace, especially with darkness approaching and my knowledge that I always slow down when it gets dark, even with the floodlights that would turn on shortly.

I reached 86km in 12 hours, and was still holding a good pace, only slowing slightly when it got dark. I had maintained a 9:30 average lap pace for the pervious two hours and was now in second place, two laps (19 minutes) behind Alain and 30 minutes in front of Olivier in 3^rd.  Olivier had taken a break earlier but was still looking good.

I had surprised myself. Normally, when it gets dark, it’s like a switch and I immediately slow by 30 seconds per kilometre, but not today.  I was still fuelling every 20 minutes and was feeling mentally and physically strong, and was gaining confidence seeing each lap time being pretty much the same that I had maintained all day.  Maybe my nutrition plan was working for me.

I reached 100km in 13 hours 55 minutes, still in 2^nd place but now only ¾’s of a lap behind Alain. More importantly, I was still maintaining a great pace, and was actually walking faster than at any time during the race to date, dipping down below 9:10 on some laps.  I was feeling great!

And then just before 15 hours (3am) I passed Alain and thought to myself that that was the race.  I would build up a lead over the next 7 or 8 hours before having my planned one hour sleep, and would then just push on for the win.  And based on my current pace, a distance well in excess of my PB and probably over 300km was looking very possible.

Falling apart:

The switch turned on or off (depending on which way you look at it) at almost exactly 4am.  In 16 hours I had walked 115km at an average lap pace of 9:24, but I was now struggling.  My lap times were in the 9:30’s and 9:40’s, and after just four quick wee stops in the first 15 hours I was now stopping at least once an hour.  There was only one toilet on course, just past the marquee at the end of each lap, but I was finding that that wasn’t coming quick enough and I was having to duck in to the bushes at about 100-150 metres before the end of the lap.

I was still consuming the carbs according to my race plan – 25 grams every 20 minutes.  Looking at my analysis (I had been recording everything I had consumed during the race in a Google App I had created for my phone), I had consumed 1,245 grams of carbohydrate in the first 16 hours of the race, a little over 5,000 calories.  Could that have been too much?

I had also taken 200mg of caffeine at 12 and again at 15 hours (the equivalent of two to three cups of coffee or six cans of coke).  Both were taken as a proactive action to keep me from feeling tired through the night and I took another 200mg at 19 hours (5am).

Caffeine is a diuretic, which means it makes your body get rid of extra salt and water by increasing urination.  I have taken caffeine in races previously and it has only been this year that I’ve started having to wee as much as I have.  This was the first race in which I was recording everything I consumed plus all toilet stops so that I can do this post-race analysis and work out what is working and what isn’t.

I also took an electrolyte tablet (to keep the salt in my body) at 5 ½ hours, 7 hours when I was feeling a bit of cramp in my left calf muscle, and 14 ½ hours.  I have taken electrolytes in the past but probably not in that quantity, but they shouldn’t be causing the problems I was experiencing.

I had consumed 6 litres of fluid in the first 16 hours of the race. Just over half of that was carb drinks and half was straight water. It had been relatively warm during the day and with my average sweat rate (something else that I’ve been measuring during training this year) being about 500 ml’s per hour at 8:15 to 8:30/km pace, 6 litres in 16 hours was probably about right.

I was drinking the carb drinks to plan and topping up with water when feeling thirsty.  My carb drinks were all mixed at a ratio of 25 grams of carbs to 125 mls of water which is double the concentration recommended by Tailwind and SiS (the two carb drinks I was consuming).  I was achieving this my adding an equal quantity of straight maltodextrin to my drinks (or at least Sarah was when mixing the drinks), and some drinks were just straight maltodextrin.  Maltodextrin is something I have been experimenting with since May/June.  It is relatively flavourless which is how I can tolerate the flavour of the increased carb concentration of Tailwind and SiS.  I was also drinking from 125ml bottles, making it easy to record the quantity I was drinking and also meaning that I could quickly drink the volume I needed and then carry an empty bottle for the remainder of the lap rather than a half full, or three quarter full bottle.

I’ve been working with a sports nutritionist in recent months and will need to discuss this review of my nutrition with him to work out what our next steps are.

I knew that Sarah would be arriving back at the track at around 6:30am (20 ½ hours) and would be bringing me a cheese jacket potato. I had planned this to be my first deviation from my 100% carb diet, and I was now counting down the minutes until she arrived.

Looking at my lap times, I see that my average lap time between 2am (16 hours) and 6:30am when Sarah arrived had slipped to 9:57.

When I created the app for recording my food and drink intake and my downtime, I also thought it could be useful to record my level of mental positivity every time I recorded either food intake or downtime, and while my memory of the race tells me that I felt like I was suffering from 16 hours, it wasn’t until 7:30am (21 ½ hours) that I actually recorded anything other than 5 out of 5 as my mindset.  So I guess I was still feeling reasonably positive through these stages.

My intention is to further develop the app so that when we go to Vallon next year for the six day race, Sarah has full access to my data and can see what I’ve been eating and drinking as well as my mindset, and can make nutrition decisions accordingly.  In my prototype, all she could see was my a Google spreadsheet containing similar information to the above screenshot.

At 6am (18 hours) I was over 3 laps ahead of Alain, with another 3 laps back to Olivier, and I guess this knowledge was keeping me positive.

After the potato at 6:30am I quickly transitioned to real foods, which have been what I’ve eaten in all races up until this year. I was still eating every 20 minutes, but the problem with real food is that there is a lot of ‘overhead’ and the carb to calorie and carb to volume ratios are much lower.  This makes it difficult to consume as many carbs per hour compared to consuming sports drinks and chews.

Over the next 12 hours I only consumed 600 grams of carbs (50 grams per hour versus 75 for the first 18 hours) and 2,800 calories (233 calories per hour versus 300 calories in the first 18 hours).

The 12 hour race started at 8:30am and the 24 hour race started at 10am.  In between the start of those two races I passed 100 miles – about 22 hours 58 minutes.  I completed that lap at 23 hours and 17 seconds with total mileage of 161.101km.  I calculated that even with some sleep and continued slowdown, 300km was highly possible – 139km to go.

My 24 hour distance was 167km.  133km to go to get to 300km.

My plan was to have a one hour sleep at 25 hours (11am) once the noise around the start of those two shorter races had died down.  I thought the dormitory areas would be relatively empty and quiet.  I was wrong!

Because I was feeling tired and struggling, I decided to bring me sleep break forward 30 minutes but the noise in the dormitory area was too much. I tried to sleep but after 30 minutes I decided to get moving again.

At 24 hours I had a big lead – 6 laps ahead of Alain with a further 4 laps back to Olivier.  I didn’t want to waste that lead if I was unable to sleep.  I didn’t know whether my lead was because I was walking faster than these two, or whether they had both had sleeps already.  Looking at their lap times post-race I see that Alain didn’t have his first rest until 35 hours (35 minutes), and he also had just under an hour at both 39 and 41 hours.

Olivier has already taken two 30 minute breaks (at 10 and 21 hours), and would take six more breaks of between 30 minutes and 1 ¾ hours during the remainder of the race.

After Alain, Olivier and myself, there was a huge gap back to 4^th place.

After my aborted attempt at sleep I walked another three hours but at a slow average lap pace of 12:14. I covered just under 17km. At the end of the lap I decided I needed a rest and sat down in the chair beside the table containing my food and drink.  I think Sarah must have been there and we decided I should try and have another sleep, but again I found the dormitory too loud to sleep and after less than 30 minutes I was back out on the track.

I was still leading but the gap was now only 2 laps back to Alain and another 3 laps to Olivier.   It was 3pm, 29 hours into the race.

Two hours later, at 5pm, Olivier had caught Alain and they were both just 200 metres behind me!

And a couple laps later, at exactly 200km Olivier passed me. Alain had taken a short break but we were all on the same lap.

I was really struggling, averaging 14 ½ minutes per lap.  I wasn’t fully aware of what was going on but I see from the lap times that at 220km, 35 hours 50 minutes, just before 10pm, I was still in second place –  36 minutes behind Olivier and 22 minutes ahead of Alain.

I don’t actually fully remember the next few hours.  I remember discussing with Sarah and telling her that I would have a sleep and she could go back to the AirBnB but my lap times show that I was off the track for about 1 hour and 35 minutes and then walked another two laps before taking a longer sleep of almost 4 ½ hours – including some foot maintenance before going back on to the track.  It had started raining too.

I’m not sure whether I sent Sarah back to the AirBnB at 10pm or when I had my second sleep.  I stopped recording my food and drink consumption as well as downtime at 10pm, and have no memory of having two sleeps with two laps in between.

I do remember using the rain as an excuse for a long sleep and hearing the rain on the roof of the gym/dormitory.  It must have been heavy.

I also remember that I slept well and when I woke up at 4:30am I went and had a look outside hoping that it was still raining, and I could go back to bed.

The rain had stopped however, and I knew that I would be disappointed in myself if I didn’t get out there and try to walk as many laps as I could in the remaining 5 ½ hours.

I spent a few minutes draining a couple small blisters, taping my feet, and putting some clean socks on, and then I headed back on to the track.

I was now in 3^rd place but 18km behind Alain and 16km behind Olivier.  I was well clear of 4^th place though.  At the completion of my first lap I had just under 5 hours to go and had completed 226km. Disappointing, but potentially I could still make 250km or more.

I walked three laps in the next 45 minutes, feeling reasonable, but then I ran out of energy again.  It was only 6am, still dark, and I found it easy to sit down for a few minutes rest at the end of each lap.  I was really just going through the motions and not walking with any positivity at all.

My laps were now averaging 20 minutes and I started feeling like the world was against me.  Why was it still dark?  It should be daylight by now (or at least that is what I thought).

I messaged Sarah asking her to cook an omelette for me when she woke up, and less than an hour later she arrived with an omelette in a tinfoil dish wrapped in more tinfoil to keep it warm.

I continued to struggle though until 8:30am, averaging 20 minutes per lap including a rest at the end of each lap. But with 90 minutes to go something changed in my head and I started picking up the pace without increasing my effort, and I wasn’t needing a rest at the end of each lap either.

My next lap was 14:20 followed by a couple high 13 minute laps, and then I was walking 12 minute laps and my last complete lap was 12:01.  My brain had registered to the fact that the race was almost over and whilst I was still walking relatively slowly, I was walking significantly faster than I had during the previous 3 or 4 hours.

On completion of my last full lap I still had 7 minutes in which I walked another 750 metres – 10 ½ minute lap pace.  I was finally feeling good again, but too late.

I finished with a total distance of just 246.378km.  8km behind Olivier and 14km behind race winner, Alain.  Even with my miserably slow pace between 5am and 8:30am, I still managed to pick up a couple kilometres on the two leaders, but overall I was just glad the race was over. And it appears that Olivier had a rest between 44 and 46 hours knowing that he had done enough to finish in front of me.

I was also glad to have both Sarah and Kathy who could gather my things from the Marquee because I headed straight to the gym/dormitory and lay on my camp bed for the hour or so until the awards ceremony.  I wasn’t going to walk any further than I had to.

Post race analysis:

Full race results can be accessed here and my lap times are available from the race timer’s website (select 48 hour walk and click on my name).

I’ve graphed the distance that each of the three of us (Alain, Olivier and myself) were on at the completion of each 30 minutes throughout the race.

All three of us were relatively steady for the first 24 hours. Alain was the most consistent throughout the race, and he had the least amount of rest of the three of us – one 30 minute break and two breaks of around 45 to 55 minutes.  That was similar to my original race plan, but it was Alain that was able to execute on the day/s, and he was a deserved winner.

I stopped recording my food and drink consumption and my downtime after 36 hours, but I do have concerns that maybe my race performance was impacted by taking on too much sugar (carbs).  In the first 36 hours I consumed 9,500 calories (263 per hour) and 2,200 grams of carbohydrate (61 grams per hour).  I also drank a total of 10.625 litres of fluid, and had 27 toilet stops with 15 of those being in the last 12 hours!  That’s roughly 30 minutes lost with toilet stops and because of my concerns that I couldn’t complete a full lap without needing a wee, I also had another 4 unproductive visits to the toilet between 6:30 and 8:30pm on the Saturday night – another 10 minutes lost.

I need to get this sorted.  Do I revert back to my old nutrition plan – which was eat real food and drink water plus occasional Coke but with no real plan of how much or how often I ate and drank? I don’t know.

I’ve also invested in a Continuous Glucose Monitor (doesn’t actually cost that much, especially when importing direct from China on Ali Express) which I’m going to use firstly during the next few weeks while I’m not training to get a blood/glucose benchmark and identify what foods do and don’t cause my blood sugar to spike.  And then when I resume training and start doing longer walks again, I’ll monitor what happens when I’m consuming carbohydrates in both in the form of sports drinks and chews and also real food and hopefully identify what does and doesn’t work for me.

Also, if I decide that the Continuous Glucose Monitor is worth wearing during races, Sarah will be able to monitor my blood sugar levels live via the app’s website and use what she sees combined with what she sees from my Google app to decide what I need to eat/drink.  A much more scientific approach to what we have done in the past.

I still think that 500 miles in six days is a possibility, but to achieve that I need everything to go perfectly in Vallon next April/May (race starts on 28th April) – no injuries like this year, and no nutrition problems.

Photos:

Some more photos:

Not everyone takes the race seriously:

And lastly, the podium:

It’s already been a month since the 2024 UK Centurions race and I still don’t really feel like writing my usual post-race race report.

The race didn’t go to plan.

In November 2022 I took a 24 hour flight to New Zealand, landed in Auckland on the Friday morning and less than 48 hours later I had completed the NZ Centurions 24 hour track race with a total distance of 178km and a 100 mile time of 21:32.

So going in to the 2024 UK Centurions race, which was also on a 400 metre track (actually 422 metres because we were racing in lane 4) I thought if I replace the 24 hour flight (and the 12 hour change in time zones) with a short train trip to Gloucester, then surely I could walk at least as fast as my November 2022 effort, and I targeted a sub 21 Hour 100 mile time and 183km+ 24 hour distance which would both have been good enough to break the 19 year old New Zealand track and NZ M55 records.

But it wasn’t to be.  And I still don’t know why.  The weather conditions were good – a couple light rain showers during the Saturday afternoon (after a 10am race start) but not too hot and not too cold, and no wind to speak of.

I enjoyed the first few hours and was walking the 7 ½ minutes per kilometre pace that I was aiming for in the early stages of the race.  Race favourite and eventual winner, Jonathan Hobbs started fast as expected but a group of four or five of us were walking a similar pace and settled into about fifth through nineth place walking as a group but in single file so as to minimise the distance walked around the curves at each end of the track.

My race plan has been to sit in behind Justin and Sharon Scholz – the two most prominent Australian Centurion walkers – who are well known for consistently walking the first 50 miles of a Centurion race in around 10 to 10 ½ hours, and then push the pace when necessary to pass 100 miles before 7am on the Sunday morning.

The race was being held in conjunction with the annual Gloucester 24 hour track race for runners, but walkers (there were 18 of us) were racing in lanes 4, 5 and 6 with lane 4 measured as 422 metres rather than 400 for lane 1.  Last year I competed in the 48 hour race at Gloucester which was a part of the same event in 2023. I passed 100 miles in 22 ½ hours and then dropped out of the race at 32 hours.  This year my wife, Ruth, had told me “Don’t come home if you drop out!” and after just six hours I had her voice ringing in my ears as my race started to come apart.

My lap times are below:

 

I completed the first 90 laps in just over 4 ¾ hours and then my lap times started to slow. The things is, I don’t know why I was slowing down.  For this race I was fuelling solely on sports carbohydrate supplements and was consuming 25 grams of carbs (100 calories) every 18 ½ minutes.  The 18 ½ minutes is because when I calculated my nutrition plan I had 78 lots of 100 calorie/25 gram drinks or chews and 24 hours divided by 78 is 18 ½ minutes.

The plan would ensure that I was consuming 75 grams of carbs per hour consistently through the race, which is something I have never managed in a race before because I have always eaten normal food and only recently started experimenting with sports supplements.  I had practiced consuming 75 grams of carbohydrate (and up to 90 grams) per hour in recent training walks ranging from 6 to 13 hours and was looking forward to using this strategy in the race.

I don’t actually think the nutrition was the problem.  I think it was more likely my mind.  I just wasn’t mentally strong enough to hold the pace I needed.

My pace steadily slowed for the next 45 laps (the next 3 hours) and at about 7 1/2 hours into the race I decided that some Coke and music would help.  I grabbed my phone and ear buds and switched on some high-tempo music, and over the next few laps I consumed a few cups of Coke from the aid station at the top end of the track.

I managed to bring my lap times down a bit, but not enough, and I continued to consume my carbohydrate supplements every 18 ½ minutes, occasionally switching them for more Coke.

I didn’t really have a plan B, other than to finish the race – Ruth wouldn’t let me drop out!  For a while I decided to target a finish time that would at least be faster than the 100 miles I walked on the same track last year, but soon I realised that wouldn’t be possible either.

Others were having problems too.  During the night, Jonathan dropped from a substantial lead to an eight lap deficit and was looking like he was on the verge of dropping out.  I encouraged him to drink some Coke and he was soon back in the race.  Others had already dropped out but that wasn’t an option for me.

For a while, in the early hours of Sunday morning, I was feeling good and walking laps with Jantinus Meints from the Netherlands, but that only lasted 30 minutes or so.  Most of the time I was battling against myself, trying to maintain a pace the would get me to 100 miles in under 24 hours.  I remember doing some calculations with 5 hours to go to ensure that that was still possible – 26km required in 5 hours – I can get there.

In the end I battled through to finish the 100 miles in eight place in a time of 23:19 (according to the official race timers lap times) or 23:23 according to the Centurions website, and continued through to 24 hours with a distance of 164.9km.  Either way, it wasn’t the time I wanted and it has taken until now to even consider writing this race report.

And the only reason I have written this now is that my next race, a 48 hour in Royan, France, is only two weeks away and I didn’t want to complete that race and have two race reports to write.  The therapy I received from writing this report has been good though.  Sometimes you just need to write things down to get the pain of a bad race out and move on to the next race.

Regarding Royan, I’m both looking forward to it and am petrified of it in equal measures.  I competed in the race in 2018, walking 278km. Since then, I’ve walked over 270km in the first 48 hours of my last three six day races but 278 remains my PB.  I’d like to beat that but if I have the problems I had at Gloucester, then 48 hours is a very, very long time – and Ruth has told me that if she hears that I dropped out, she will have the locks on the front door changed before I get home!

So if you are reading this race report in the future, and it is my last race report, then you will know that the race didn’t go well, Ruth locked me out of the house, and I never got to my computer to write another race report 😊

Where do I start?

After last year’s race I developed a strong belief that I had learnt enough during my 5 six-day races (2016 to 2023) that in 2024 I’d be able to break the world record.

But the 2024 race gave me many more lessons, and a lot of pain.

Race preparation:

After last year’s race I didn’t do too much training over the summer and then tried to race a 48 hour track race in August which didn’t go well and resulted in a DNF at 31 hours.

I then did even less training and piled on the weight – adding 10kg in the space of just four months from August to Christmas.

I’d been struggling with a hamstring/glute problem since February and had physio from June to August but that wasn’t making any difference.  After the August DNF I considered giving up endurance sport completely – which is probably why I sub-consciously put on the weight – but in late November I had an injection into the painful area and restarted physio, and in December I resumed training.

On January 1^st I was 93kg and significantly less fit than I had been at the start of any year since I don’t know when.

But I had a plan, and the plan involved being much more professional in my attitude towards the six-day race.  Previously I had started the race with an overall goal but no idea how we (this race is a team effort involving many people, not least my wife, Ruth, and my support crew, Sarah) would achieve that goal.

In both the last two years I had a training plan for the 14-18 weeks leading up to the race and I felt that my training had gone well the last two years so I was aiming to replicate that.  But when it came to race week I just took things as they came – no plan regarding nutrition and only a rough idea as to how much sleep I was going to have, and when.  I also didn’t have any daily mileage goals, let alone breaking each day down into segments with goals for each segment.

So this year we made some major changes:

• Race plan
  I created a spreadsheet recording each hour of the race and then marked in when I thought I would want to sleep. My plan was to walk through until late Sunday evening, around 34/35 hours and then sleep for 90 minutes.  Then 12 hours later, another 45 minutes. Monday night, another 90 minutes, and then I would fall into a 45 minute sleep every eight hours routine, with a quick massage after each sleep before resuming.
  I then worked out that as with previous years I would hold an average pace of 7 ½ kilometres an hour for the first 9 or 10 hours before slowing overnight and eventually settling on a pace of 6 ½ kilometres an hour during day two and 6km per hour for the remainder of the race.
  I also built in some contingency for dealing with blisters, unplanned rests, etc.
  If everything went to plan, the end result would be exactly 500 miles (805km).
• Nutrition plan
  Most of my planning was around nutrition. I had never planned what I was going to eat before.  My only plan was to eat something every 30 minutes, although often I would forget and could sometimes go a couple hours without eating, or drinking.
  Not only did I plan what I was going to eat every 30 minutes throughout the race but I calculated the calories and carbohydrate content of everything I would be eating and drinking, and during every Saturday long walk leading up to the race I experimented with eating 400+ calories and up to 90 grams of carbs per hour to see whether my gut could handle it.
  My wife, Ruth, also made some Bolognese sauce, some ratatouille, and some shepherds pie, all packed with plenty of vegetables, to ensure that I would be eating better quality food that in previous races.  We froze the food and travelled by train/bus to Vallon Pont d’Arc so that I could take all the food with me, packed in a cooler bag with ice packs.
  And for the first time ever, I invested in sport carbohydrate supplements – Tailwind, SIS powder and chews, and Clif Bloks – to enable me to easily increase the quantity of carbohydrate I was consuming each hour.

My training during January, February and March mirrored my training from 2022 and 2023 with the exception that my overall average training pace was 20 seconds per kilometre slower than previous years.  I put this down to me carrying too much weight and wasn’t too concerned because I was convinced that my more professional attitude to the race would outweigh any decrease in training speed.  I also found that I could still easily walk 32 minutes for 5km in my weekly parkruns. It was just the rest of my training that was slow – although still faster than the pace I was planning on walking for six days.

I also had the disappointment of a DNF in the track 24 hour race I entered in March, but that DNF was due to the constant rain and cold conditions, and not fitness.

Final preparations:

So April finally arrives and on the Wednesday before the Saturday race start I met Kathy Crilley, who would also be competing in the six-day race, and our support crew, Sarah Lightman, at St Pancras railway station for the 12 hour journey through to Paris, down to Valence TGV and on to Vallon Pont d’Arc.

We stayed in an AirBnB on Wednesday and Thursday night before moving into our cabin at the race venue on the Friday morning.  Staying in the AirBnB, rather than a hotel, meant that we could eat better food and rest better than the last two years – when we had flown to Marseille on the Wednesday, hotel overnight, then train to Vallon on the Thursday.

It also gave us the opportunity to do some sightseeing on the Thursday.

On Friday morning we moved into our cabin – the same cabin we had last year – and it was as if we had never left.  After an hour of unpacking we had the cabin set up exactly as we had it last year.

Other than a trip back up to town to do our final grocery shop, the remainder of the day was spent resting and chatting with the occasional other walker or runner.

Saturday morning was spent eating and doing final preparations – applying 2Toms blister shield powder to my feet, more eating, resting, keeping off my feet, etc.

Day 1:

The race started at 12 noon.  Day 1 was sunny and warm and the first few laps went by relatively quickly.  As well as the 6 day race, there was also a 24 and 48 hour race so the course was busy and the hours flew by.

I started conservatively, compared to many others, and it wasn’t hour 4 that I first took the lead amongst the walkers. For the next four hours though, the lead changed regularly, which was fine by me.  At this early stage it wasn’t about racing and I was just focusing on maintaining an even pace, eating every 30 minutes, drinking regularly and enjoying the race.

When we reached 8 hours (just under 60km) the lead changed for the last time, and overnight I slowly increased my lead – to 6km by 2am (100km) and 19km by 8am (142km).  This was more because most of the walkers had a sleep break during the first night while my preference has always been to walk through the first 24 hours or more before my first sleep – something that I’m actually going to change next year.

At around 9:30am (21 ½ hours) I felt a hot spot starting to develop under my right foot.  I decided to take a quick break to change my shoes – switching from my Brooks to Hokas.

I had two pair of shoes with me – My Brooks Adrenaline size 11, width 4E (extra wide) and my Hoka Clifton size 11 ½ width 2E (which are also extra wide – don’t ask me how the sizing works).  Both shoes are wide enough to enable me to comfortably wear two pairs of socks – bamboo liner socks and a normal pair of sports socks. This is exactly the same setup I’ve had for the last two years – same make and model shoes. Same make and model socks.

The orthotics I was using were also the same ones I used last year, which were new in late 2022.  The forecast when we left home was for rain during the race and because of my bad experience in the 24 hour race in March, I made a last minute decision to also take my old orthotics, just in case I needed to change them due to them becoming waterlogged or something.

Incidentally, I also made a last minute decision, as I was leaving the house to travel to France, to take my orange jacket that I wore throughout my winter training.  The jacket is warm but not waterproof, and initially I had only packed two waterproof jackets based on the forecast – which was rain on and off all week.  As I was walking out the door I saw my orange jacket on the coat hanger and thought ‘what if it is cold but not wet’, and packed the orange jacket as well.  This jacket ended up getting a lot of wear during the rest of the race because on the Sunday morning a cold wind started to pick up and I ended up wearing the orange jacket for the next five days.  It stunk by the end of the race.

Day 1 finished with me passing 100 miles (161km) in 23 hours and 11 minutes (5 ½ minutes slower than last year) and a final 24 hour mileage of 166.2km (the same distance as last year).  I led the next walker by 23km.

Both the 100 mile time and 24 hour distance are NZ M55 age group road racewalking records. This is because a) NZ racewalking records are classified as Track if the lap distance is less than 500 metres or Road if longer, and b) no NZ male racewalker in the 55-59 age group is recorded as walking 100 miles or further on a road course (last year I was 54).

Day 2:

I’d been struggling a little during the last two hours so I decided to have a short sleep after passing the 24 hour mark – 45 minutes with a quick massage from Sarah afterwards.  Looking at my lap times while writing this race report I see that the nap didn’t result in a faster pace afterwards but it did remove the tiredness and I continued walking the next 7 hours at an average lap pace of 11:06 – 9:48 per kilometre. This was only about 20 seconds per lap slower than my race plan, but it felt much harder than it should have.

I ended up bringing my scheduled 90 minute sleep forward from 10pm Sunday night (34 hours) to 8pm but according to the notes I was making on my phone throughout the race, I only slept for one hour but had two hours of the track.  The additional hour included another massage and some foot maintenance – this was the first time I soaked my painful feet in ice water – and I switched back to my Brooks shoes.

Both feet had become extremely sore during the day with hotspots on the bottom of each foot and small blisters that needed draining.  Little did I know at this stage but soaking my feet in ice water was going to become something that I would do twice a day for the rest of the race.

Up until this break I was also recording in my phone how often I was stopping for toilet breaks.  It wasn’t as hot as we expected and I was intending on getting a lot of my calories/carbs from drinking Tailwind and SIS.  26 toilet breaks between race start at 12 noon on Saturday and my second sleep at 8pm on Sunday.  26 toilet breaks in 32 hours.

During that time I drank 9 ½ litres of fluid – 3 litres of Tailwind, 3 litres of SIS and 3 ½ litres of water.  Why I drank so much water given the cooler than expected temperature, I have no idea, except that on day 1 it was sunny, and although cool and windy I figured that I would be sweating due to the sun.

The course we were walking comprised of an upper and a lower loop with an out and back section linking the two, and a campground toilet block in the middle of the out and back section.  This made it easy to quickly stop when I needed to, but next year we will need to monitor this more closely and reduce fluid intake when I’m stopping for toilet breaks too frequently.

One of the other issues, that I wasn’t made aware of until after the race, was that the timing system shows that on four occasions during the six days, after leaving the toilet I completed a second loop at the top end of the course rather than heading down to the bottom loop like I should have.

This happened because when nature called I found I had to answer quickly, and this meant that sometimes I would stop at the toilet block on my way towards the top loop and sometimes I would stop on my way back.  Four times I stopped on my way back, forgot I’d already done the top loop, and did it again.  Extra distance of around 300-400 metres each time I made a mistake!

The next 5 ½ hours after my 8pm sleep were painful (mentally) and slow – average pace of 12:50 per lap.  I decided to have another sleep at 4am.  Sleeping for two hours, and waking refreshed and just on daybreak, I found I felt much better – the best I’d felt in 24 hours.

I walked at a relatively good pace (average of 11:20/lap) from when I woke up through to the end of day 2, reaching 271.4km at the 48 hour mark – which not only was a New Zealand M55 racewalking record but also an M55 running record!  Both records previously belonging to Gerald Manderson, whose NZ racewalking records from the later 90’s and early 2,000’s I’ve been slowly breaking over the last ten years.

I was also 1km ahead of where I was at 48 hours last year, well behind my target mileage though.  Day 2 was much colder than day 1 and that orange jacket that I’d thrown in my bag as I was leaving home a few days ago became my uniform for the next five days.  Whilst not waterproof (it wasn’t raining), it was windproof and warm.

I always struggle on day 2 – 105km this year and 104km both last year and the year before.  Excluding breaks, my average walking pace on day 2 was 5.76km/hour, versus 6.98km/hour on day 1.  Obviously on day 1 I’m fresh but a drop in average walking speed of more than 1km/hour is too much in my view, and is something I’m going to be working on during the later part of this year.

Interestingly, my day 2 average walking speed (excluding breaks) was faster this year than 2023 (5.37km/h) and 2022 (5.67km/h), but I still felt like I was struggling.  See the bottom of this race report for more analysis.

Day 3:

I took a 1 ¾ hour break at the 48 hour mark, slept an hour, soaked my feet again, and swapped back to my Hokas.

And then I walked for 16 hours with just a couple short breaks, including a stop at 8pm to put on long johns because it had become so cold.  Normally my legs don’t feel the cold but during the night the temperature was now getting down to 2 degrees, and during the day the cold wind – which we had for pretty much the whole race – kept the temperature in single figures during the day.

I had a quick powernap at 1am and then stopped just before 4:30am for a 90 minute sleep.

Sarah had told me that she would wake up at 6:00am so we planned that I would decide how much sleep I wanted and would come into the cabin that amount of time before 6:00am.

The previous day I was finding that whenever Sarah gave me hot foot to eat, it was getting cold within minutes when I was trying to eat it while walking. So we decided that for breakfast, I’d eat while still lying in bed.  It was like luxury hotel service.  From day 3 onwards, Sarah would wake me with a bowl of porridge for breakfast which I’d eat while lying in my sleeping bag.  While eating that she would make scrambled eggs, and then after I’d eaten my eggs I’d either have a massage and/or soak my feet and then head back out on to the track with some yoghurt or something else to eat while walking.

Mentally, if not physically, I found myself feeling much better after this routine when I headed back out on to the track, although as the race progressed it would take me longer and longer to get back to a proper walk because the long breaks were too long and my feet and legs were painful when I restarted each morning.

I had changed my shoes again after the 4:30am sleep – back into my Brooks – but my right foot, especially, was extremely sore.

As I’ve mentioned, one of the areas I was focusing on this year was my nutrition.  Making sure I was eating enough calories and carbohydrates, and Sarah was recording everything I consumed in a spreadsheet for analysis postrace (preparation for next year) and also to ensure I didn’t go long periods without consuming enough fuel, which has been a problem in the past.

Because race rules don’t allow feeding outside of our cabins except in the designated food area – just after the end of each lap – Sarah would either meet me in the food area to hand me food, or leave a range of food on our food table in the food tent and I would message her via Facebook every half hour to tell her what I was eating/drinking. We were allowed to eat food while on the course, but the rules stated that all food could only be handed to the athlete either in their cabin or in the food area.

Periodically, Sarah would message me to tell me what I needed to eat, or meet me outside the cabin as I walked past and tell me what I needed to eat – to keep my calories.

When she was asleep each night I would collect my food/drink from the food area and record what I ate in notepad on my phone, then message the list to Sarah in bulk in the morning.

The system worked well, and I have done some in-depth analysis of my fuelling during the race which I have included at the end of this race report.  I’ve also made an appointment to start discussing this with a sports nutritionist so that we can make further improvements for next year.

At 10am the pain in my right foot forced me to stop again. Sarah studied the blistering on my the bottom of my right foot and while I was soaking my feet in ice water she researched online and found evidence that this particular blistering could be caused by rubbing from orthotics.

Good news – I had brought my old orthotics with me!

We changed my shoes back to Hokas with my old orthotics and within a few hours I found that the pain had reduced substantially.

By the end of day 3, 72 hours, I had reached 372.1km, covering just 100km on day 3.  I was 10km behind the same time last year, but had a 33km lead over Yolanda with another 10km back to Christophe Biet.

I now realised that my painful feet together with the non-stop wind, which was not only making it cold but also making us work that little bit harder, chasing any distance goals was not helping me mentally and I decided that I would just focus on holding my lead.

Day 4:

My next goal was to reach 500 kilometres.  Last year I passed 500km in 4 days, 2 hours and 29 minutes, and with 128km still to go it was unlikely that I would beat that, especially as I now found that due to me changing my gait slightly to compensate for the pain in my feet, especially the right foot, I had managed to put too much strain on my quads which were now complaining.

After my 10am sleep I walked another 4 ½ hours averaging 12 minutes per lap before stopping for a 20 minute powernap at 4pm and another short break for a quick massage at 5:30. My quads were really sore but mentally I was in a good place.  I kept focussed on my 500km goal.

I grabbed another 20 minute powernap just after midnight but other than that I walked steadily through the night and by 5am when I stopped for my next sleep I had completed 454km and was leading Yolanda by 50km.  She had just resumed walking after her sleep as I finished my lap and headed into the cabin.

I was also monitoring how I was going against the runners and found myself in fifth place overall.  Over the second half of the race, depending on who was sleeping, when, I would sometimes find myself as high as third place, and I don’t think I ever drifted back out of the top five overall.  Not that I was competing with the runners, but it was something else to focus on.

I slept for 1 hour and 40 minutes and once again Sarah woke me with a bowl of porridge, which I ate while lying in my nice warm sleeping bag, followed by scrambled eggs or maybe an omelette.

After breakfast I changed my shoes back to the Brooks and headed out the door with something else to eat, and my focus set firmly on the remaining 46km required to pass 50km.

On checking the results, the gap back to Yolanda was now 36km. I’d been off the track for just over 2 ½ hours during which time she had walked 18km.  By my calculations that meant she was walking 7km per hour and I had been averaging just 13:30 per lap overnight – 5km per hour!

I was confident that I could hold on to my lead, but with 50 hours to go, it could be tight.

96 hours, 4 days, came up on the clock and I found myself on 477.3km – 9km down on the same time last year.  I had walked 105km in the last 24 hours, and been off the track for 4 hours 23 minutes, not that I was calculating that at the time.

I used to be happy with anything over 100km per day after day 1 of a six-day race, but this was well down on my original race plan (which went out the window days ago) and with me being 9km down on last year (in which I finished with 711km) I was beginning to realise that it would take some kind of a miracle for me to even reach 700km (which was my plan D).

Plan A had been to walk 500 miles (805km), something no one has done in under six days in the modern race-walking era and would have required everything to go right – especially the weather.  Plan B was the world record (787km).  Plan C was to beat last year’s distance, and now even plan D was looking unlikely.

I still has Plan E – to beat the 660km that Yolanda had walked when she was in the W55-59 age group, Plan F – to break the M55-59 world record of 639km (set by Philippe Clement when he finished 2^nd to me in this same race in 2022), and if it came to it, Plan G – to break the 622km NZ M55-59 age group record walked by Gerald Manderson way back in 1999.

I had all these targets recorded in notepad on my phone so that if things started falling apart, as they were, I could reset my focus and not give up completely.

Day 5:

With only 23km to go before I reached 500km (actually 24km because the lap immediately before reaching 500km finished just 20 metres short and therefore to get a 500km time I had to complete another full lap) I kept walking rather than taking a sleep break at the end of the day as I had been doing since the start – or at least that was the intention.

I ended up taking two short breaks a few laps apart, one for a quick massage and some hot food – it was still cold and windy so I preferred to each hot food inside rather than ‘rapidly going cold’ food outside – and  second short break for a 20 minute powernap.

I finally reached 500 (501km) just before 6pm.  Official 500km time, and new NZ M55 record, was 4 days 5 hours, 58 minutes and 34 seconds.  Just under 2 ½ hours behind last year.

My quads and right foot were extremely sore so we made the decision that I would come in for a long sleep, lots of food, soak feet again, massage, etc.

For the previous two hours I had been averaging 14:30 per lap – 12:48 per kilometre.  There was no point in continuing at that slow pace – 4.7km/hour – and perhaps a shower might also help.

I had a 36km lead over Yolanda and even if she caught me while I was off the track, I should be well rested and should be able to put distance on her again when she slept later on.

I can’t remember what order we did things in, but I think I had a shower then fell into bed.  I remember waking after 90 minutes needing the toilet and I remember Sarah asking me if I was going to get up. I replied “no, I want another 90 minutes sleep” and when she accepted that I remember being slightly surprised – that she would allow me to go back to sleep.

And when she woke me after I’d slept for three hours I remember having the strangest conversation with her.  It would have been even stranger for her.

I had been dreaming that Sarah was my controller and I was in some sort of endurance experiment where I had to do whatever I was told. The experiment was to see how much endurance I had and the next challenge was to see if I could plough a path all the way to New York.  From where, I don’t know, but it was going to be a long way.

Eventually I came back to reality and learned that I was in a race.

I assume we then soaked my feet while I ate, but I really have no idea.  I know I was off the track for a total of just under five hours and slept for three of those – my longest break and longest sleep of the race, and my only shower!

Before leaving the cabin, I also changed shoes for the last time in the race – back to my Hokas – and after resuming walking I checked the results and found that Yolanda was still 19km behind me and had been off the course for the previous hour.

She had a 4km lead over Christophe who was 5km ahead of Claudie.

I knew that baring anything serious going wrong – something that would force me to stop – I would win the race.  The question was, could I walk further than Yolanda’s W55 world record of 660km.  Not that I’m sexist in any way – we’ve all seen women winning endurance races outright in recent years – but if I was going to break the Men’s 55-59 record, I really wanted to break the overall 55-59 age group world record.

So that became my new goal – 37 hours to walk 160km.  Should be achievable even in the condition I was now in.

I walked well during the night, feeling strong mentally, even if not physically.  I walked through to just before 7am (8 hours) but at a relatively slow pace of only slightly under 14 minutes per lap.  It felt faster and I really didn’t calculate how slow I was walking even when I saw my lap times at the end of each lap.

The good news is that, with the exception of my strange dream and conversation with Sarah, I didn’t have any hallucinations.  On night five last year I started hallucinating badly, but one of my aims this year was to avoid hallucinations thanks to improved nutrition and more sleep.  My original plan was for 10 ½ hours sleep this year, versus 8 ½ last year.  In the end, I actually had 13 ½ hours sleep this year.

At 7am I had a 20 minute powernap and some hot food, and then with it being daylight again I found that I was able to pick the pace up relatively easily, averaging 12 minutes per lap before stopping at 120 hours, the end of day 5, to soak my feet again.

My Day 5 mileage was my worst of the race at only 86km!  But with the long sleep and breaks, I’d only walked for 17 ½ hours.  Even so, my average walking sleep was my slowest of the race to date at only 4.9km/hour – not that I was calculating that during the race.

Looking back on the race over the last few weeks, I can’t help wondering if I was using my painful right foot as an excuse during day 5 (and day 6) and taking it easy.  Could I have pushed myself harder?  I think, in hindsight, that yes I could have.  But is that because I have quickly forgotten the pain?  I don’t know.

At the end of day 5 I was 36km ahead of Yolanda, who was now 17km ahead of Christophe (himself a previous winner of this race when it used to be in Privas), with another 5km back to Claudie.

There was no way I was going to lose this race from here.  I had now completed 563.3km and would probably only need one more short sleep, maybe two, during the final day.

I needed 76km to break the M55 world record – should be relatively easy – and 97km to break the overall 55-59 age group world record – again, highly likely if I could complete the next 24 hours without needing too much sleep, and without any major problems.

Day 6:

I had a 45 minute break shortly after the end of day 5 to soak my feet, for hopefully the last time, and to eat some more hot foot (multi-tasking 😊) and then walked for five hours at a little under 13 minutes per lap average pace until I decided I needed a sleep at around 6pm.  A 30 minute powernap, hot foot and quick massage.  It was forecast to rain during our final night so I decided not to put my long johns on.  If it rained, wet long johns would be worse than no long johns if it didn’t rain.

It was 7pm when I headed back on to the track.  I was at 591km.  48km to get the M55 world record and 69km to get the overall 55-59 world record, and 17 hours left in the race.

It was slow-going overnight. As with every night during the race I received a few phone calls from family and friends in NZ (their day time) which helped to break up the monotony and keep me awake.  I was really just going through the motions with lap times ranging from 12 to 14 minutes with the occasional slower lap if I took a toilet break – and slower still when I left the toilets and walked an extra top loop of the course – which is relatively easy to see when I look at my lap times as I’m writing this race report.  This is something I need to sort out for next year.  No wasted mileage!

I had hoped to walk the last 17 hours without another sleep break, figuring that any time lost sleeping in the closing stages of the race would be hard to make up in the time remaining, but at around 2am I needed one more sleep.  It had also just started to rain (lightly) and I needed to stop in at the cabin to get my light rain jacket, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone, as they say, and have a 20 minute powernap.  I was at 625 kilometres.  14km to go to break Phillipe’s M55 world record.

As I neared the 639km lap I checked online to find out what his record was – 639.187km – and worked out what lap I would pass that on.  As it happened, lap 565 finished at 639.119km, 70 metre short.

If I had been up against the clock, and this was my final lap before the end of the race, then part laps are measured, but I still had over 6 ½ hours to go so I needed to complete lap 566 through to 640.25km before I could call myself the M55 world recorder holder – which I did at just after 5:30am.

And with 6 ½ hours to walk and only another 21km to pass Yolanda’s overall 55-59 world record, I switched my concerns to Yolanda.  She was in a really bad way.  She had developed a terrible backwards lean early in the race and was now really struggling and concerned that she wouldn’t beat the female race record of 636km which, while it hadn’t been her primary goal at the start of the race, was now her focus.

Being American and only used to imperial measurements, she was struggling in her tiredness to convert the distances displayed on the results board into miles so I did the calculations for her and estimated that she was still on pace to complete 400 miles – something she has done five times previously, which is more than any other person in modern racewalking history.  By the end of this race, my three 400+ mile results would be the second highest number of 400+ mile results.

However, in my own tired state, I had used the calculator on my phone to multiply 400 x 1.6, which is 640km and I was confident that she would achieve that during the remaining hours of the race.  About an hour or so later I remembered that 1 mile is 1.609km and when we are talking 400 miles, that extra 9 metres per mile adds up!  I recalculated and identified that Yolanda needed to complete 643.6km to pass 400 miles.

I think at that stage there was probably still four hours left so when I saw Yolanda next I explained my mistake and told her she needed 643.6km to get to 400 miles.  She was really out of it though – a state I’ve been in many times – and I don’t think she understood so I just reassured her that she was on pace to break the race record and let her get on with it.

I was now at the stage where I just wanted the race to be over.  The leader of the running race, Christian Mauduit, had now passed 500 miles and was also just going through the motions, so we walked a few laps together.  Christian has an incredible race pedigree. Not only is he an accomplished six-day runner, with a PB of 871km from back in 2015, he is also the fifth best six-day racewalker in history with his 710km (1km less than my 711km from last year) which he walked in Privas in 2014.

I had always wondered why he took time out (from running) to walk a six-day race and had assumed it was because he was injured at the time.  He explained that he had realised that learning to race-walk would improve his endurance running, and the 2014 Privas six-day race was three months before the 2014/15 Across The Years six-day race in Arizona – which is where he ran 871km – so he thought that the ideal opportunity to put his walk training to the test.

Not only is Christian a great ultra-distance runner and walker, but he has also completed deca-ironmans (38km swim, 1,800km cycle, and 422km run) and the Race Across America (RAMM) cycling race (3,000 miles / 4,800km) from the West Coast of the USA to the East Coast, so we talked about that for a while too.

I reached 660km a little before 9:30am at around the same time that the heavens opened and we finally got the rain that had been promised in the forecasts leading up to race day.

I was already wearing my orange jacket, which isn’t waterproof, and had put my lightweight rain jacket over the top of that, but I now needs my heavy-duty red Goretex rain jacket, which I put on over the top of everything I was wearing.

It was wet and cold and now that I had achieved everything that was going to be possible in this race, something strange happened.  My quads went completely dead.  Every step was painful.

Looking at my lap times, I had been averaging 13 minutes per lap for the previous 6 hours with a slowest lap of 14:37, which was probably a toilet break lap, and suddenly I was only just under 19 minutes.  The next laps were 17:31 and 16:16.  The heavy rain had dissipated leaving at least three sections of the course flooded, although in all cases we could walk on the grass to get around the flooding.

I walked three more painful laps before the 144 hours was up – 17:54, 19:22, and 20:08.

Not the way I wanted to finish the race, and definitely not like last year when I was celebrating a great race.

With the partial lap measurement I had completed 671.029km in six days – my second best result, but 40km less than last year.

My final day mileage was 107.7km, but for the second day in a row my average walking speed, after removing breaks, was under 5km per hour.

I won the walking race comfortably and placed fifth overall – which was actually my worst placing in the three years we have raced on this course.  In 2022 I walked 667km to win the walk and placed 4^th overall, and last year my 711km was good enough for 2^nd overall.

I have to wonder in hindsight, was my foot the main problem, so was it my mind?

Analysis:

My foot problems:

Since the race finished I’ve done plenty of analysis to help understand what happened, and also identify areas for improvement for next year.

The big question is, why did my right foot blister so badly?

In the last previous two years at Vallon I’ve worn the same socks and the same shoes, and other than a few small blisters, I haven’t had any issues (with my feet anyway).

I also train in the same shoes and socks during my longer training walks.

I was also using the same orthotics that I’ve used since late 2022 and used last year.

The course itself has ten 90 degree turns every lap with some of the 90 degree turns being slightly sharper than others due to the width of the path at those corners.

The first three turns are right hand turns and the remainder are left turns.  But that can’t be the cause of the blisters. The course has been the same every year.

The only difference was the weather.  In 2022 we had afternoon temperatures in the high 20’s and night time temperatures were still warm.  Last year was cooler – afternoon temperatures in the low 20’s but still warm through each night. Both years were calm with little to no wind.

This year, however, we had a constant wind, which wasn’t strong, but was always there, and the daytime temperature was in single figures most/all the time and dropped to 2 degrees overnight.

I was also heavier going into the race than the previous two years.

Could the wind, and perhaps my extra weight, have caused the blisters?  That is the only think I can thank of.

One thing I’ll be doing next year though, is getting my feet ‘tidied up’ by a podiatrist before a month or so before the race.  I always have calluses on the heels and outsides of my feet, and whilst they were the problem this year, if I had developed a blister under a callus, then that could have been very painful.

Nutrition:

Sarah recorded everything I ate and drank during the race.  In total, 37,889 calories and almost 7 kilograms of carbohydrate. This was actually less than I was planning, but it felt like I was eating non-stop for the whole race.

I don’t know how much I have eaten in past races but I suspect it would be less than half of this.

And as I’ve mentioned, Ruth had prepared some food for me to take to the race, which meant that I was eating better quality food in the days leading up to the race and in the first few days of the race – while what Ruth had made lasted.  Next year we will take more of Ruth’s vegetable laden Bolognese sauce and ratatouille.

This is a list of everything I consumed during the race:

Type	Unit Qty	Item	Quantity	Calories	Carbs	Mls	Category
Food	1	Apple	6	580	150		Fruit
Food	0.5	Apple	1	48	13		Fruit
Food	1	Asda Rice Cake	8	280	60		Processed Food
Food	0.25	Asda Rice Cake	1	9	2		Processed Food
Food	1	Banana	8	840	216		Fruit
Food	1	Bread (white – one slice)	1	76	14		Processed Food
Food	1	Chocolate Cadbury Dairy Milk (5 squares)	2	244	26		Processed Food
Food	1	Clif Bloks (3)	38	3572	874		Sports Food
Food	2	Crossiant	1	462	52		Processed Food
Food	1	Crossiant	2	462	52		Processed Food
Food	1	Dates (12)	15	3120	705		Fruit
Food	1	Del Monte Tinned peaches (1/2 tin)	4	440	100		Fruit
Food	0.5	Del Monte Tinned peaches (1/2 tin)	1	55	13		Fruit
Food	1	Dole fruit in jelly	1	101	25		Processed Food
Food	1	Haribo	2	304	40		Processed Food
Food	1	Jacket potatoes (medium size with cheese)	6	2226	366		Hot Food
Food	0.5	Jacket potatoes (medium size with cheese)	1	186	31		Hot Food
Food	1	jelly babies (8)	5	870	210		Processed Food
Food	1	Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Cereal Bar	3	249	45		Processed Food
Food	1	Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Squares Marshmallow	6	714	126		Processed Food
Food	1	Magnum (mini)	3	408	39		Processed Food
Food	1	Milk chocolate digestives (2)	4	500	60		Processed Food
Food	2	Milk chocolate digestives (2)	3	750	90		Processed Food
Food	1	Muller Rice Pudding 170 Grams	7	1274	224		Processed Food
Food	1	Omelette (2 eggs and cheese)	4	1000	2		Hot Food
Food	1	Omelette (2 eggs and ham)	3	486	3		Hot Food
Food	1.5	Omelette (2 eggs and ham)	3	729	5		Hot Food
Food	1	Orange	3	186	45		Fruit
Food	1	Pasta with Ruth’s sauce & mince	2	1140	104		Hot Food
Food	0.5	Pasta with Ruth’s sauce & mince	2	570	52		Hot Food
Food	1	Poridge (half cup)	7	1715	252		Hot Food
Food	1	Raisins 50 grams	4	640	144		Fruit
Food	0.66	Rice (1/2 pack) & Ratatoulle (1/4 cont)	1	168	30		Hot Food
Food	0.5	Rice (1/2 pack) & Ratatoulle (1/4 cont)	3	383	68		Hot Food
Food	1	Ruth’s Cottage Pie (200 grams)	2	526	46		Hot Food
Food	1	Sainsbury’s Flapjack Bites (4)	4	1072	148		Processed Food
Food	1	sausage (1)	4	368	2		Hot Food
Food	1	shrimps & banana sweets	1	75	18		Processed Food
Food	1	SiS chew (3 blocks)	10	950	230		Sports Food
Food	1	Strawberries (4)	5	80	20		Fruit
Food	0.5	Toasted sandwich	3	387	43		Hot Food
Food	1	Toasted sandwich	1	258	29		Hot Food
Food	1	Walkers Ready Salted Crisps	6	780	78		Processed Food
Food	1	Yoghurt	5	520	70		Processed Food
Drink	0.5	Coke (330ml can)	2	140	39	330	Soft Drink
Drink	1	Coke (330ml can)	3	420	117	990	Soft Drink
Drink	1	Huel (1 scope)	3	600	60	750	Heath Drink
Drink	1	Protein Drink (500 mls)	1	87	2	500	Protein Drink
Drink	1	SiS (1 1/2 scopes 250 mls)	30	2850	720	7500	Sports Drink
Drink	1	Tailwind (1 scope 250 mls)	40	4000	1000	10000	Sports Drink
Drink	1	Water (500 ml)	23	0	0	11500	Water
				37889	6855	31570

And this is my nutritional analysis:

Also, in everyday life I take a few supplements with my breakfast – vitamin D3, magnesium, omega 3 fish oil, a multivitamin, and also iron.  So we decided I would take these every twelve hours during the race.

I don’t remember the reason I take each of these, and will discuss the benefits (or otherwise) of these with the sports nutritionist when I meet him in June, but the reason for the iron is that in every race I’ve ever done longer than 24 hours, I’ve always developed mouth ulcers that have hindered my eating in the latter stages of the race.  Last year I was told that this could be caused by the constant pounding breaking down something within the blood, and that iron supplementation could help.  Well, it didn’t.  And we also quickly identified that two iron tablets per day rather than one, was too much.  I won’t go into the details as to why 😊

I have never really been keen on sports nutrition and have preferred to consume normal everyday foods during races.  This is mainly due to the expense.  But when I started planning how I would consume as many calories as I was going to need during the race, I realised that I needed to consume foods that had a high carb to calorie ratio and rather than just drinking water, I needed to be drinking carbohydrate sports drinks.

I obviously expected the weather to be warmer than it was and was budgeting on drinking around 37 litres of carbohydrate drink with water as required.

I ended up drinking 31 ½ of fluid during the race, but 11 ½ of that was water.  In the cooler temperatures I should probably have consumed more sports chews and less fluid, and definitely less water.

The way I manage my drinking (it sounds like I’m an alcoholic 😊) during the race is that I pick up my bottle – Sarah mixes up 500 ml bottles of both SIS and Tailwind, and also water, and leaves them on our table in the food tent – from the food tent which is just before we head on to the out-and-back stretch, and drink as much as I want at the time – usually about 100 mls – then on the out-and-back stretch there are bollards on the left hand side of the track as we head up to the top loop.  The bollards are every 50 metres or so and are a mixture of lower level solar-powered lights standing about 1 metre tall and brick bollards with water taps or power supplies for caravans.  When I’ve had enough to drink I place my bottle on the bollard and then collect it next time I need it, drink and leave it on the next bollard.

I don’t know why, but in the three years we have been competing on this circuit, I appear to be the only person that regularly does this.  At times I often have two and sometimes three bottles scattered up and down the course.  And when the bottle is finished I either leave it back at the food tent or throw it on the lawn in front of the cabin for Sarah to collect and refill.

My plan going into the race was to maintain a minimum intake of 250 calories per hour and 50 grams of carbohydrate per hours.  In training in the two months leading up to the race I had trained my gut to tolerate high calorie/carb consumption by consuming up to 400 calories and 90 grams of carbs per hour, which is the quantity I intended to consume during the first 24 to 48 hours, or as long as I could tolerate it.

Day 1 went OK but day 2 was well below expectations before we managed to stabilise over the last four days.

In creating the spreadsheet that Sarah was going to use to record all my food and fluid consumption, I had created some formulae and conditional formatting to highlight in light green when consumption was above the 250 calories/50 grams per hour level on a rolling four hour basis, and dark green when above 300 calories/75 grams per hour.

But we struggled to keep the even level throughout the race that I was aiming for.

I am sure though, that if I had done this years race, with all the foot problems, and with last year’s nutrition, then there is no way I was have managed the distance I did.

I don’t know how much can be read into this, because of my feet problems, the fact that day 1 mileage and speed is always better than the rest of the race, and all the other factors that impact on the race, but this graph compares average walking speed (distance walked divided by walking hours) each day to the calories and carbohydrates I consumed each day:

The best six-day racewalking results:

And as well as now having three six-day results over 400 miles, I also have three of the nine best distances in modern-day racewalking (age group world records in bold):

Ranking	Distance	Name	Nationality	DoB	Age Group	Location	Date
1	786k744	Ivo Majetic	USA	21.06.68	M45	Balaton	03-09/05/2018
2	752k271	Dominique Bunel	FRA	16.11.68	M45	Privas	02-08/08/2015
3	741k212	John Dowling	IRE	15.06.29	M50	Nottingham	31-7/6-8/1983
4	711k299	Richard McChesney	NZL	14.07.68	M50	Vallon Pont d’Arc	15-21/04/2023
5	710k060	Christian Mauduit	FRA	09.06.75	M35	Privas	19-24/10/2014
6	703k133	Daniel Duboscq	FRA	16.08.54	M60	Privas	02-08/08/2015
7	701k892	Alain Grassi	FRA	21.07.59	M50	Antibes	6-12/06/2010
8	671k029	Richard McChesney	NZL	14.07.68	M55	Vallon Pont d’Arc	20-26/05/2024
9	667k357	Richard McChesney	NZL	14.07.68	M50	Vallon Pont d’Arc	07-13/05/2022
10	665k225	Dominique Naumowicz	FRA	28.03.63	M45	Antibes	5-11/06/2011
11	665k175	Yolanda Holder	USA	08.05.58	W60	Milwaukee	25-31.08.2019
12	660k590	Yolanda Holder	USA	08.05.58	W55	Phoenix	28/12-02/01/2017

So I have to be happy with that.

Comparing my three races at Vallon Pont d’Arc:

I’ve also done some analysis of this year versus 2023 and 2022.  All three races were on the same course. I won all three (in the walking division) and the difference between my best and worst distances is only 44km – or 305 metres per hour.

I didn’t record how much sleep I had in 2022, only total downtime – which was 29 ¼ hours (or 20.3% of the total race).  Last year I managed to reduce that to 18 ¾ hours with 8 ½ hours of that being sleep, and this year I was in the middle with 25 hours downtime including 13 ½ hours of sleep.

The downtime this year was excessive due to the foot problem but I think I may have found the right amount of sleep – probably around 12 hours with one long (3 hour) sleep mid race and the rest of the sleep breaks being between 20 minute powernaps and 1 ½ hours.

One thing I think will be useful next year will be to bring my first sleep forward to just before breakfast on the first morning – around 18 hours into the race.

Day two is always my biggest problem in multi-day racing, and I think starting the actual day (as opposed to the 24 hour period) with a short sleep just before breakfast will be helpful.

I’m planning on practicing this in a 48 hour race in October.

Having now completed 6 six-day races in eight years, to finish a ‘bad’ race with my second best distance is something that I’m proud of.  Even if in the back of my mind I still wonder whether I used the foot as an excuse to reduce the pace rather than pushing through the pain.

My weight:

Lastly, I’ve been tracking my weight since 2017.  This graph shows the ups and downs, and my recent journey from 83kg in May last year up to 93kg and back down to 83kg in May this year – after the race.

The race winners:

Just a couple more photos to finish off:

Thanks:

I couldn’t do these races without the support from my wife, Ruth.  She makes a lot of sacrifices in the four months leading up to the race.  Most nights (including weekends) I’m in bed by 9pm and up again around 4am – trying not to wake her, but only successful 50% of the time.

She also supports me throughout the year with all my races and doesn’t complain when I leave her several weekends plus at least one week per year to go off and compete in races.

And Sarah Lightman, who has travelled with us to support both Kathy Crilley and myself in the last three six-day races.  Like me, every year she learns more about how to provide better support, and as a team, it is the two of us that achieve the distances and results that I get the credit for.  I’m convinced that Sarah’s support is worth at least an hour per day, and probably much more.

As well as Ruth and Sarah, I don’t know how many people have been a part of my journey in training for and competing in these six-day races.  Whether it is phone calls during the race, positive comments on facebook/twitter, or something else.  Thanks.

What’s Next:

At the start of this year I had intended on competing in two six-day races during 2024 – Vallon in April and then Balaton (Hungary), where Ivo Majetic set the six-day racewalking world record in 2018, in September.  The Balaton race this year doubles as the world six-day running championship and I wanted to compete with the best six-day runners in the world.

But this race took so much out of me mentally, and with the injuries I currently have – I have several minor injuries that I need to recover from as well as the very raw bottom of my right foot – and a planned trip to New Zealand, I’ve decided to take a six week break before I resume training, so have withdrawn from the Hungarian six-day race.

Instead I’m going to race the UK Centurion race in August, which this year will be on the track and is being run in conjunction with the annual 24 hour race in Gloucester – the same event that held the 48 hour race that I dropped out of at 31 hours last year.  If my training goes well I want to attempt to break Peter Ballie’s NZ track 100 mile and 24 hour records – 21:04 and 182.6km respectively.  These are also the NZ M55 track and overall M55 records.

And then in October I’m going to return to Royan for their 48 hour race which I won in 2018 (with a distance of 278km which I hope to beat).  I didn’t enjoy the course or the race in 2018, but it is a 48 hour walking race and my focus will be on improving my day 2 performance due to better nutrition and a short powernap at around 18 hours – which is what I’m planning for next years six-day race.