Category Archives: Race Reports

Continental Centurions race 2016

May 16, 2016Race Reportsadmin

In race-walking, a Centurion is someone who walks 100 miles in less than 24 hours in an official qualifying race. Centurionism (if that is a word) is recognised in seven different countries – the UK, Holland, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and most recently South Africa which will have its first qualifying race in October of this year. The first time that an athlete completes 100 miles in under 24 hours in a country they are given a unique centurion number. My numbers are C19 in New Zealand and C1131 in the UK – meaning that I was the 19^th person to complete the feat in NZ and the 1,131^st to do it in the UK. 1,131 might sound like a high number but it is significantly less than the 1,600+ people who have swam the English Channel, the 4,000+ people who have climbed Mount Everest. It is also marginally less than the number of people who have played ruby for the All Blacks.

Other than Malaysia, which no longer has a regular qualifying race, each country holds a qualifying race on an annual basis and last weekend 83 race-walkers competed in Schiedam, Holland to qualify as Continental Centurions.

There were a mixture of experienced centurion race-walkers (including the legendary Sandra Brown who is one of only two people to have qualified as a centurion in all six countries that have had qualifying races and has completed over 170 races of 100 miles or further!) and relative novices who were attempting to become a Centurion for the first time. I was the only New Zealand competitor. There were three Australians plus half a dozen from the UK and 12 from the Isle Of Man. The rest of the field comprised mainly of Dutch race-walkers with a few from other parts of Europe.

As with all big races, one of the highlights was catching up with everyone beforehand, and that started when I arrived at my hotel in Schiedam on the Friday morning to find that my room wasn’t yet available. I phoned Australian race-walker John Kilmartin (Australian Centurion C67 and UK Centurion C1137) who had arrived a few days earlier and dropped my bags in his room before going for a walk around the course with John.

After walking a lap of the course John and I headed back to the hotel for lunch and were mistaken by hotel staff as being a part of the conference that was happening in the hotel and as a result we ended up being served a free lunch. Who said that there’s no such thing as a free lunch?

During the course of the afternoon more competitors arrived including Peter Miller (UK Centurion C1159) from the Isle of Man who, during the race, specifically asked me to mention him in my race report. 🙂 He also told me that he had been reading my book so I guess he deserves a mention here, as does Michael Bonney (UK Centurion C1135) who also told me that he had read my book. FYI, I’m not going to mention the names of every single person that has ever read my book as that would add at least another 2 lines to the length of this race report!

By dinner time there were about 20 competitors/support crew at the hotel. We had dinner together and then I went to bed around 10pm hoping for a good nights sleep as I wouldn’t be getting any sleep the next day.

Over the last few years I have got to the stage where I sleep really well the night before a race. I don’t know what it was this time though, but I had been struggling to sleep all week and the Friday night was no exception. During the week the daytime temperature had increased from mid-teens to mid 20’s and I had put my problems getting to sleep down to the warmer nigh time temperature but I suspect it was more the pre-race nerves/excitement. I eventually got to sleep though and woke up the following morning to find that race day was much cooler than the last few days with a forecast 7 to 12 degrees, with cloud and showers throughout the weekend.

The course:

The Schiedam course was a 3.936km (almost 2.5 mile) circuit set within Prinses Beatrixpark with the first lap being slightly shorter so that we would finish the 100 mile race in front of the official timers; and for the last 30 minutes of the 24 hour race we would go on to a much shorter 991 meter circuit. It was set amongst the trees which provided shelter (from the sun, the wind, and the rain at different times during the race) for over a half of each lap and was almost dead flat other than a few small bridges crossing over streams.

The only problem I had with the course was that there were no ‘out and back’ sections which meant there wasn’t any opportunity to see any other competitors other than when lapping them, or being lapped, or occasionally when going past the supporters’ tent village at the end of each lap where you would occasionally see another walker sitting down for a rest or being attended to by their support team.

For me personally, I enjoyed the course and found that the distance per lap was almost perfect as it gave me the opportunity to get food and drink every 30 minutes throughout the whole race.

The race:

As well as the 100 mile/24 hour race there were also 50km, 50 mile, and 100km race being held during the weekend with the 50km race starting at the same time as us (but from a different starting point) and the 50 mile and 100km races starting later on. In total there were over 130 walkers competing with 83 of them being on the start line at 12 noon for the 100 mile/24 hour race.

Continental Centurions 2016 race start — Race start – I’m hidden on the left hand end

My intention was to start off at a pace of 7 minutes, 30 seconds per kilometre (8 km / 5 miles per hour) and hold that through daylight hours and as long as I could through the night. I was able to start off at close to my target pace but I didn’t feel 100% comfortable and couldn’t believe how fast some of the other competitors were walking. According to the results, after lap 1 (which I completed at a 7:36 pace) I was in 37^th place and by the end of lap 3 I was in 38^th place and averaging 7:38/km.

From the 4^th lap onwards I started to feel better, my pace started to improve marginally, and for the next 22 ½ hours I slowly picked my way through the field. My plan of walking a good pace during daylight hours was working and I was consistently lapping the circuit with times ranging from my fastest lap of the day (lap 7) in 29:28 through to 30:56 (with two laps in the mid 31 minutes).

I passed 50 miles almost bang on target at 10 hours and 19 minutes, and in 17^th place, but then the wheels fell off. A 33 ½ minute lap was followed by a 35 ½ minute lap. And then a 34 minute lap followed by a 32 minute lap. What was happening? I couldn’t work it out. I was feeling fine physically and had been eating well throughout the race to date – mainly eating fruit but also some biscuits, and drinking water with the occasional cup of orange cordial.

I had to do something or my goal of going under 21 hours for 100 miles and more than 182.648km (the current New Zealand Record) for 24 hours would not happen. I had already gone through the stage of telling myself that missing the records would be OK as I have another 100 mile race scheduled for August, but I don’t have another 24 hour race scheduled for 2016.

During training, and also long races when I am walking alone, I like to listen to podcasts as they give me something to think about during all those hours that I am on my feet, but I realised that listening to podcasts for the next 12 hours wasn’t going to do me any good. I switched to music and what a difference that made! It was like I had flicked a switch. My next lap took 30 minutes and 40 seconds and the next three were all under 30 minutes.

I also switched my nutrition. I remember walking past Jim who was supporting a few of us along with Suzanne and told Jim that for the next 9 hours he had to give me chocolate every lap! I also had some cans of coke stored in the tent for when I needed them (I had already had a can of coke and a bag of crisps as a ‘reward’ for passing 50km and 50 miles) and when I passed Jim at the end of the next lap he had a can of coke and some chocolate ready for me. At 100km (18^th place in 13 hours and 4 minutes – 9 minutes slower than my pre-race target) I had a whole chocolate bar along with a can of coke, but other than that it was four pieces of chocolate washed down with water every 30 minutes .

Once again, I am 100% certain that if it wasn’t for my support team I would not have achieved my goals. Thanks Jim and Suzanne.

100 mile NZ record:

I remember getting to the stage where I had 10 laps to complete to get through to 100 miles. The time on the clock, at the end of the lap, was 15 hours and 50 minutes meaning that I had to average slightly under 31 minutes per lap and I would complete 100 miles in under 21 hours and would beat Peter Baillie’s 10 ½ year old record (21:04:59) by at least 5 minutes. “I can do this”, I thought.

And then a 32 minute lap! Or so I thought. The clock now read 16:22:06 and I couldn’t remember what the number of seconds were on the clock at the end of the last lap, but it was definitely slower than the sub-31 minute laps I needed. The next lap took 31:19 and then I managed a sub-31 minute lap but only by a few seconds. As I lapped the course I watched the minutes go up and it was looking more and more unlikely that I would break 21 hours. I still had 5 minutes up my sleeve to get the NZ record though and I rationalised that 21:02 would be OK.

But I really wanted to get under 21 hours, and I managed to start reeling off some mid 30 minute laps. I had another Coke with two laps to go as well as another chocolate bar and gave it everything I had.

As I came down the finishing straight for the last time Suzanne handed me the black silver fern flag and I powered down the last 60 to 70 meters holding the flag above my head. It was an emotional moment. I had finally broken the NZ 100 meter record which was something I had targeted since I first started race-walking in 2012. My time was 20:58:27. I had managed to get under 21 hours! And I was in 7^th place overall, and became the 432^nd Continental Centurion.

I crossed the finish line ready to celebrate but Jim grabbed the flag off me and told me to keep moving. I still had 3 more hours to walk if I wanted to also break the NZ 24 hour record.

24 hour NZ record?

It’s not every day that you break a national record though, and while I kept walking I slowed a little and rang my wife, Ruth, to tell her the news and then posted on both facebook and twitter as I casually walked the next lap in a very slow 36 minutes.

John caught me at some stage during that lap and we started to pick up the pace a little, walking a 32 minute lap and then a 30 minute lap. John then decided to ‘race’ his last lap (through to 100 miles) and left me for dead. He walked 28 ½ minutes for his last lap (faster than any of my laps and his fastest of the race) and I started to feel the strain of the previous 23 hours slowing to 31 ½ and then 32 ½ minutes a lap – but still on pace to break Peter Baillie’s 24 hour record of 182.648km.

With 30 minutes to go, as each walker completes their lap they are directed on to a smaller 991 meter lap and this occurred for me at 23 hours and 41 minutes (180.614km). I walked two of these shorter laps and when I passed the finish line with just 2 minutes and 59 seconds to go until the 24 hours was up I asked one of the officials whether they would sound a horn at 24 hours and we would all stop (as is traditional in a 24 hour race) or what? And to my surprise he said that we had to complete the final lap – which I did, finishing the race in 24 hours, 5 minutes and 18 seconds, and covering a total distance of 183.587km. This was 939 meters further than the NZ record, but it had taken me 5 minutes longer than 24 hours.

Go back one lap: my time was 23 hours, 57 minutes and 1 second and my distance was 182.598km – just 52 minutes short of the record. Based on my average speed for the last lap, this meant that at 24 hours I had covered a total distance of 182.950 meters – beating the NZ record by 302 meters.

Unfortunately, while this maths makes sense to me, it doesn’t meet the official rules regarding records and as a result, I cannot claim the NZ 24 hour record. Looks like I will have to try again!

I am claiming this as a ‘New Zealand Best’ however, and for the time being I’m happy with that. It means that I now have a goal for 2017 as I don’t intend having another attempt at a 24 hour race this year.

One upside was that I ended up winning the 24 hour race, but this was because 5 of the 6 walkers who finished the 100 mile race in front of me stopped walking at that stage. It did mean, however, that I came home with two trophies instead of just one.

Continental Centurions Race — Walking through the trees just after the 2km point of each lap

Continental Centurions 24 hour race - finished — Finished!

The Walk – My M25 Circumnavigation

March 23, 2016Race Reports, Training, Walking Adventuresadmin

The Walk - My M25 circumnavigation On the weekend of 11^th to 13^th March I attempted to become the first person to circumnavigate the M25 on foot non-stop. With the help of a few friends who acted as my support crew my plan was to start the 165 mile trek beside the QE2 bridge in Dartford, on the western side of the Thames, and walk clockwise around the M25 following the A and B roads until I arrived back at the QE2 bridge on the eastern side of the Thames (there is no pedestrian access to the bridge itself) some 40 to 48 hours later. Or at least that was the plan.

Fundraising:

I also wanted to use the walk to raise money for Sport Relief, one of the biggest annual charity fundraising events in the UK in which celebrities raise millions of pounds by challenging themselves to massive sporting challenges (see Eddie Izzard’s 27 marathon challenge, Jo Brand’s 150 mile ‘Hell of a Walk’ and Greg Jame’s 5 back to back half ironmans) and thousands of people like you and I contribute our little bit by raising thousands of smaller amounts through our own sporting challenges.

I contacted Fitbit to help me with my fundraising by sponsoring a prize to the person who had the closest guess as to the number of steps my walk took – providing that they also made a donation. And to that extent the walk was a success. I raised £1,500 for Sport Relief and hopefully also spread the word about this great little device called ‘Fitbit’.

Fitbit also kindly gave me a Fitbit Surge which was a nice upgrade on the Fitbit Charge that I previously used.

Preparation:

Unlike an organised event/race in which I only need to turn up to and walk, there was plenty that needed to be done before I even laced up my shoes.

Firstly, I had to plan the route. All I knew was that it would make sense to start and finish at the Dartford Crossing, although at the time I didn’t realise that pedestrians couldn’t walk across the bridge. The M25 motorway circles London but because it is a motorway, you can’t actually walk on the M25 itself. I have used MapMyRun previously to plan walking routes, including the ‘Richard Walks London’ route that I did in central London last year, so decided to use it to map my M25 route which would follow the A and B roads around the M25, staying as close to the motorway as possible throughout the journey. MapMyRun is an easy tool to use and it also integrates with Google Maps, and Google street view to enable the user to see what the roads along the route actually look like, and the route I mapped out looked OK to me.

There was a good mixture of narrow country lanes, suburban streets, and busier high traffic roads. Plenty of variety. The only problem, as I was to find out, was that in a number of places the roads that MapMyRun planned were not ‘roads’ as such, but were dirt or grass trails – they all had names including one grass trail called ‘New Road’. Fortunately the weather was kind to us as many of the trails would have been impossible to walk if it had rained throughout the week beforehand.

One of the many country lanes	A Duel Carriageway without a footpath!
One of many ‘roads’	Crossing over the M40

Once I had planned the route I created and printed detailed maps that spread the full 165 mile route across 55 A4 printed pages which had every kilometre marked and the names of all the streets that we would be following. I printed three copies of the maps – one for me and two for my support crew. I also laminated one of the copies in case it rained.

I also employed the services of OpenTracking.co.uk who uploaded the map to their website and gave me a GPS tracking unit to carry so that anyone who was interested, my support crew, and I could see where I was on the map at any time. This proved to be very helpful on a number of occasions when I got lost, although unfortunately the tracker stopped transmitting after about 30 hours.

And on a regular basis in the lead-up to the walk I posted on facebook and twitter to try and encourage donations to Sport Relief as well as entries in to the competition to win a Fitbit Surge.

The Start:

After all the planning, the morning of Friday 11^th March finally arrived and I left home mid-morning to travel via train to the start where I met one of my support crew, Sarah Lightman, who was giving up her weekend (along with Jim Hanson and Suzanne Beardsmore who would join us on Saturday afternoon) to help me achieve my goal. Walking long distances isn’t easy. When you get tired you can’t think clearly, and when you can’t think clearly you forget to eat regularly, and you make other mistakes that you wouldn’t normally make. But a good support crew makes all the difference, and I had the best. Both Sarah and Suzanne are experienced long distance race-walkers and Jim has supported us all during many races in recent years. I know that I wouldn’t have completed this walk without the support that these three gave me during the weekend. It definitely wasn’t something that I could have done solo.

Friday gave us a beautiful spring afternoon, and for the first time this year it was warm enough to wear a T shirt outside. We knew that the temperature would plummet overnight though and I had plenty of warm clothing plus other stuff I might need during the weekend which we put in to the back of Sarah’s car as I made final preparations for the walk.

And then at 2:30 in the afternoon I was off. The start of my next adventure.

Start of M25 circumnavigation walk — The start, with the QE2 Bridge in the background

I had daylight for the first 3 ½ hours and for most of this time it was reasonably warm. It was enjoyable walking along roads that I hadn’t walked before. Sarah was leapfrogging ahead and feeding me every 30 minutes and everything was well with the world.

But as it started getting colder my pace started to slow although I still felt good and was enjoying myself. Around about 7:30pm it was time for Sarah to leave me for the evening. We had decided that it was more important to have all three of my support crew with me on the Saturday night, and that as I would be relatively fresh and on roads that I had either walked or cycled before during the Friday night section, I would be OK walking alone. So I put all of my warm clothes on as well as my camelback which was filled with food and drink, and collected the maps that I would need to get me around the lower portion of the M25 overnight, and said goodnight to Sarah.

Friday Night:

It got cold very rapidly and my pace dropped quickly. This wasn’t a race though so I wasn’t too concerned about my pace. Whilst I had a plan in mind that would see me walking the first 80 miles in 18 ½ hours to get through to Black Park in Windsor in time to walk parkrun at 9am on Saturday, I wasn’t going to lose any sleep if I didn’t make it. Actually I was going to lose a lot of sleep!

It was during the night that I realised why all of the long distance races I have done to date (8 races of 100 miles or further) have been in the summer – because the nights are so much warmer. The freezing cold weather was sapping my energy. At one stage my hands were shaking so much from the cold then when I tried to have a drink I ended up pouring it down my front. I was also having trouble reading my map when my hands were shaking, and got lost a few times by making silly mistakes.

But despite the cold I was still enjoying the adventure, and was evening enjoying having to find my way back on track after getting lost. The GPS live tracking was proving really useful.

At around 3am on Saturday morning I arrived at the A3 motorway. My map showed that I was to cross the motorway via a footbridge but I had somehow managed to arrive at the motorway about 50 meters down the road from the footbridge and in the dark I couldn’t work out how to get on to the walkway. So instead, given that there wasn’t any traffic, I climbed the barriers and the median strip and clambered across the road. Having crossed the motorway I needed to walk through the forest on the other side for about 200 meters to get to the road that I was supposed to follow, but somehow I managed to go the wrong way and it took me almost 30 minutes to find my way back out of the forest. The forest isn’t actually that big either!

A few hours later I got lost again when I found myself in the grounds of a hospital. My map showed that I should take the 2^nd exit at a roundabout but the map didn’t include the hospital which was actually the 2^nd exit. My wife happened to ring me while I was walking through the hospital grounds and asked how I was going. I replied that I am “in a hospital” and then quickly explained that I wasn’t actually “in hospital” but just lost within the hospital grounds.

And on another occasion I thought I was a few miles ahead of where I actually was, and was therefore reading the wrong page of my map. I tried to walk through a gate and down a private road but was stopped by security guards. I returned the way I had come and took another side street which wasn’t on my map (because I was reading the wrong page of the map) only to get completely lost. It wasn’t until about an hour later that I worked out that I was actually trying to read the wrong page of the map – and that was only because somehow I had managed to catch myself up and get back on to the correct page. All a part of the adventure.

Saturday:

Sarah called me at around 7am and we agreed to meet at Egham at around 8:30am. If I was to get to Black Park by 9am I had to be in Egham (65 miles into my trek) by 7am and that wasn’t happening, so I sent a txt to the Black Park parkrun event director to explain that I wouldn’t be there, and continued my slow’ish walk. The fact that I wouldn’t be doing parkrun would also help me catch up on some of the excess mileage I had done getting lost – as I wouldn’t need to do the extra 5km I had planned on walking within Black Park.

I passed the 100km mark in 14 hours 38 minutes and found Sarah soon afterwards with a hot Pot Noodles which was just what I needed to try and warm up. The weather was still cold so I kept my overnight warm clothing on and continued walking. I still wasn’t really tired. Just slow.

Sarah continued from where she left off the previous day, leapfrogging past me and feeding me every 30 minutes. At around 11am my parkrun and ultra-running friend, Louise Ayling, surprised me by joining me for an hour or more. It was good to talk to someone for more than just a few moments at a time although I don’t remember what Louise and I talked about. The conversation helped take my mind off the job at hand and made the next few miles go by that much faster (both in my mind and physically).

Louise walked with me until Suzanne and Jim joined us in the early afternoon and from there on I had a constant walking companion with either Suzanne or Sarah walking beside me to keep me company and take my mind off things.

Saturday afternoon with Suzanne and Sarah

For most of the afternoon I made steady progress through hilly countryside around the north western side of the M25. We walked past many beautiful and expensive properties and lots of small country pubs as we went from one village to the next. I was slow but was making steady progress walking at a pace of around 3 ½ to 4 miles an hour.

When we passed the 100 mile mark just before 5pm (26 hours and 19 minutes after starting) I posted on facebook that we would be finished within another 21 hours! And that was when it hit me – 21 more hours on my feet!

When doing an ultra-distance event, or any event for that matter, it is best not to focus on how far you have to go – at least not until you are almost finished. Up until then I had simply been focussing on one step after another. Every kilometre my watch would vibrate and I would check my pace. And then keep walking. I don’t think I gave any thought to how far I had to go until I got to 100 miles.

In need of a rest:

I kept going and continued to maintain a reasonable pace but as it got dark I started to tire. Jim and Sarah/Suzanne (whoever wasn’t walking with me) continued to leapfrog me but it seemed to take longer and longer to catch up to where they were waiting each time. Occasionally we would catch up with them before expected. This would happen when the ‘road’ we were walking down became a dirt trail that cars couldn’t travel along and they would have to double-back and find another route while we continued to follow the map.

There was one particular street, Tom’s Lane in Kings Langley, which I would have sworn was at least 3 to 4 miles long although Google maps tells me that it is only 1 ½ miles in length. It was a steady uphill slog from start to finish. I was walking with Suzanne at the time and Jim and Sarah came past us in the car, stopped a few meters ahead and jumped out of the car with packets of hot chips from the local fish and chip shop. This was just what I needed. I had basically been snacking for the previous 30 or so hours and it was really nice to eat something substantial.

Unfortunately it wasn’t enough though, and just as we approached 32 hours I decided that my idea of walking non-stop wasn’t going to work. At least not this time. We caught up with the car and I climbed in to the back and slept for 15 minutes – lying across the back seat with my legs hanging out of the door and my feet resting on a fold-up chair that Jim arranged as a foot rest. It wasn’t a deep sleep as I could hear voices but it was enough of a sleep for me to feel a little rested when I was woken up by my cold support crew who had been standing beside the car trying to keep warm.

I wasn’t ready to give up yet, but I was exhausted and needed a rest. I don’t know whether this was the start of the end, or whether the rest prolonged the inevitable, but 2 ½ hours later I again found myself sitting in the car, and this time we made the decision that at the pace I was walking (about 2 ½ miles an hour) there was little chance, if any, that I would make it to the finish within the next 18 to 20 hours and that the best thing for me was to get some proper sleep.

3/4s through my M25 Circumnavigation — Unfinished Business

It was 1am on Sunday morning and I couldn’t face the idea of spending any more time on my feet, so I also made the decision that I wouldn’t attempt to continue after a sleep either. That was it. I had attempted to walk around the M25 and had failed. It was a challenge that had beaten me. Mount Everest wasn’t climbed by the first person who attempted it, and the M25 would not be walked non-stop by the first person who attempted that either.

It turned out that we were only a mile or so from the nearest hotel so we checked in to the Days Inn in South Mimms and I was asleep within minutes – after posting and tweeting a quick message to those people following my progress to advise that I had stopped.

A quick recovery:

Ruth collected me the following morning and Jim and Suzanne took Sarah back to find her car and they all headed back to their respective homes to recover from their ordeal – supporting is just as hard, if not harder, than actually doing the event and I am grateful for the work that they all put in over the weekend.

When I got home I slept on the couch for a few hours before going to bed for a few hours, having tea, and going to bed again. A great way to spend a Sunday, but not what I had planned.

Incredibly, the following morning I woke up feeling refreshed. And while eating breakfast I got this dumb idea about going back to South Mimms and continuing my walk. I had booked the Monday off work in order to recover, and I felt recovered. So why not go and complete what I had started.

I expected (and maybe hoped) that Ruth would try and talk me out of it, but she supported the idea so after breakfast I packed what I needed for an un-supported 45 mile walk, drove the car to the railway station nearest to where I would finish, and caught the train back to South Mimms. From there I walked the 2 miles back to where we had stopped in the early hours of Sunday morning and rang Suzanne to confirm that I was in the right place – there was a hand carwash on one side of the road and a pub on the other, and I couldn’t remember either of them. I thought we had stopped in the middle of a country lane but Suzanne confirmed that I was in the right place.

The re-start during M25 circumnavigation — The re-start. Not exactly the quite country lane where I thought we had stopped.

The last quarter:

My original map indicated that the whole route would be about 165 miles and we had completed 120 so in theory I had just 45 miles to go. It was 3pm on Monday afternoon so it was reasonable to expect that I could finish by about 2am given that I felt recovered, and even if I was a little slow, I should be finished by 4am. I didn’t need to be at work until 9:30am so I would have time to drive home, get a small amount of sleep, and then get over to north London where I was scheduled to be working for the week.

So I set off towards the finish and almost immediately got lost! Not a good sign. The plan had always been to follow the ‘A’ and ‘B’ roads on the outside of the M25, staying as close to the M25 as possible. And as we had discovered over the weekend, many of the ‘B’ roads were actually just dirt trails. This added to the interest though and meant that the walk was anything but boring. It also made getting lost very easy and my map reading isn’t great at the best of times. One of the other benefits of having Sarah and Suzanne walking with me on Saturday was that it was their job to navigate. But I was on my own now.

The first few hours of the walk were reasonably uneventful. I wasn’t walking fast but I was walking at a reasonable pace and was happy with progress. Until, that is, I came across a street sign that I recognised from earlier. It was about 9pm and I was in the same place I had been two whole hours earlier! I couldn’t believe it. I studied the map and worked out where I had gone wrong, and then followed the correct route. But two hours was going to cause me some problems with getting home and then to work in the morning. For the next few hours I kept convincing myself that I could finish by 4/4:30am but I knew in my heart that that was unlikely, and once I accepted reality I then spent a few hours thinking about what excuse I could give my client for letting them down – maybe I could tell them that I was sick (maybe I was), or maybe tell them that Zac was sick. But I then thought that potentially they may have heard about my walk, and it would be unprofessional if I made an excuse that wasn’t true. So I decided that I would call them and explain the situation when I got to the finish. If I had thought things through in advance I could have put my work clothes, laptop, etc, in the car and gone straight from the finish to the client’s office via a local swimming pool (for a shower) but this wasn’t an option. I would have to finish the walk, go home, have a shower, and then go to the client’s office.

I was enjoying the walk but wasn’t walking much faster than 3 to 3 ½ miles an hour, and having got lost for two hours it was likely to be after 6am by the time I finished. The good thing about that, though, was that it would be daylight when I finished meaning that I could take a ‘finish line’ selfie.

So I walked through the night, enjoying most of it other than the extreme cold. I had my neck and face covered during the night and it was so cold that I didn’t eat much – as eating meant I needed to bare my skin to the cold air. I wasn’t hungry though. With my new healthy eating diet I have found that I can walk for hours without eating. I did eat every couple hours, but not every 30 minutes as planned.

Eventually it became daylight and I still had a few miles to go. Cars and trucks started rushing past me as people headed off to work – and I kept walking. I got lost one last time, with just a few miles to go, when my map told me to go down a pedestrian path which had a locked gate at the end. I had to double-back and find another route through to the finish which was through the industrial area called ‘Greys’ on the eastern side of the Thames.

And finally, just before 7am, I arrived at the end of the road beside the QE2 bridge, and the entrance to a truck depot.

Finish of M25 Circumnavigation — Finished! With the QE2 Bridge behind me.

The journey had taken me 86 ½ hours from when I had started at 2:30 on Friday afternoon just a few hundred meters away on the other side of the river through to 7am on Tuesday morning. Of that, I had walked for 49 hours and 56 minutes not counting the additional 2 miles from South Mimms railway station to where I resumed the walk on Monday afternoon.

I had walked 177 miles (285km) and taken 342,313 steps. Add to that the 2 miles I walked from the South Mimms railway station and the 2 ½ miles I still had to walk back to the car, and it would be fair to say that this was my longest ever walk – beating the 176 miles I walked at the Privas 3 day race last year.

I had also raised almost £1,500 for Sport Relief!

After walking back to the car I rang the client I was due to see and explained that I would be late. Fortunately he was 100% understanding. I then drove home for lunch and a shower before heading off to work. No time for any sleep. Ironically, having just walked a lap of the M25, my Sat Nav told me that the M25 was too congested to drive home via that route and took me home via the A13 in to central London.

M25 circumnavigation map — To put it in to perspective – a walk around a small part of the UK

The after-effects:

Walking distances of 100 miles or more tends to do a few strange things to my body.

Firstly, after every event I have done of 100 miles or further I have had night sweats for at least one, and often a few nights. It is as if I have an illness and my body is trying to sweat the illness out of me.

Secondly, my mouth and tongue tend to swell up a little and I lose all sense of taste. This time around the roof of my mouth also felt raw and it was painful to eat anything for a whole week. It is still not 100% recovered as I write this.

And lastly, the obvious one is that even with the best precautions, you tend to get blisters on your feet. For this event I used Injinji toe socks together with 2Toms Blister Shield and I only had two small blisters – one on the inside of each heel. Those blisters came through during the Saturday and I popped and drained them on the Monday before starting the final quarter of the journey. They came back again during that stage, but overall I am pretty happy to report that I walked 177 miles and only got two small blisters.

Kinesiology Tape holding my right knee together — Kinesiology Tape on my right knee

The other issue I had going in to the event was my right knee which had been causing me pain/discomfort and had limited my training during the 3 weeks leading up to the walk. The good news is that the knee didn’t hurt at all until I had my first sleep at 32 hours, and after that it was only occasionally uncomfortable. It is sore now, and I won’t resume training for another week or so to let it recover more, but it held up for the duration of the walk. During the walk I had the knee taped using Kinesiology Tape that I purchased on Amazon. My physio had recommended it and pointed me at this YouTube video which I followed to apply the tape.

And one other side affect that I have suffered from since my first Roubaix 28 hour race is that I appear to have killed a nerve or nerves in the front of my left foot, and don’t have much feeling in that foot. It almost always feels like I have ‘pins and needles’ but I have had the foot checked by doctors and there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong that they are worried about. It is just one of the side-effects of being a long-distance race-walker.

The good news, though, is that my legs recovered quickly. They were a little sore on the Monday but if it wasn’t for the blistered feet, I would have been walking normally by the Tuesday.

The plan now is to take another week off, 2 ½ weeks in total, before I resume training in preparation for my next two races – the Continental Centurions 24 hour race in Holland in mid May, and the Grand Union Canal Race (145 miles) at the end of May.

Surrey Comet Article:

This article was published in the Surrey Comet after I completed my walk:

Surrey Comet M25 circumnavigation article

Fitbit Blog article:

This article was published on Fitbit’s blog after I completed the walk: http://fitbiteurope.tumblr.com/post/142291947815/if-you-think-the-m25-is-tough-when-stuck-in

Podcast Interview:

And in August 2016 I appeared in my first ever podcast interview when Chris Desmond from the Uncomfortable Is OK Podcast interviewed me about the M25 Circumnavigation and my upcoming 6 day race.

I did it!

In 2017 I had another attempt at a non-stop M25 circumnavigation. Read about it here.

Roubaix 28 hour race

September 21, 2015Race Reportsadmin

The Roubaix 28 hour race started in 1954 and has been held every year since, making it one of the oldest continuously run race-walking races in the world.

When I competed last year this was my longest race to date and only my third race of 100 miles or longer. Going in to this year’s event I had completed four races of 100 miles or longer in the previous 6 months and was in excellent condition, both mentally and physically. My goal was to complete at least 200km and ideally a little further than that as the current New Zealand 200km race-walking record was 27 hours and 40 minutes and it would be the perfect ending to my racing year if I could beat that time.

As with last year, there were only two English speaking walkers in the race. Suzanne Beardsmore, who was coming off the 6 day race at Privas in August, and myself. We were being supported by Suzanne’s partner Jim and fellow centurion race-walker Sarah Lightman, and there were two teams of GB walkers competing in the 24 hour relay event which accompanied the main race.

Jim, Sarah, Suzanne and I traveled to Roubaix by car on Friday, the day before the race, and set up our tent beside the track on Friday afternoon before joining many of the other individual and relay competitors for dinner at a local restaurant on Friday evening. One of the things I love about the French ultra-distance race-walking circuit is that at every race you make new friends and meet old friends again. And with walkers coming from all over Europe you often find yourself communicating in very basic English, French, or maybe even in sign language.

This year was no exception, with walkers coming from New Zealand, England, France, Holland, Russia, Germany, and several other European countries.

Race Day:

Roubaix 28 hour race - our tent — Suzanne and I outside our team tent

On Saturday morning we visited a supermarket to purchase some last minute food supplies and then set up the rest of our equipment trackside to ensure that Jim and Sarah would be able to provide the best possible support. A job they did perfectly.

The race itself started in the town square in Roubaix at 11am so we left Sarah at the track and traveled the short distance in to Roubaix with Bernard Six (most of the photos in this race report are thanks to Bernard), a local resident who has been supporting the English race participants for as many years as anyone can remember. It was a beautiful sunny morning driving from the track to the town centre, a big improvement over the wet weather from Friday, but no sooner had we arrived at the race start and the heavens opened with a torrential downpour that lasted about ten minutes. During this time we sought refuge in a local café, had a drink and made use of their toilet to relieve pre-race nerves. Fortunately, once the rain stopped we didn’t have any weather problems again – until we arrived back in England on Monday afternoon!

Roubaix 28 hour race start — Race Start – you can see my head behind the guy in black towards the left

Tour of Roubaix:

Roubaix 28 hour race - tour of the town The first 18.5km was a tour of Roubaix which is a fun way to start the race. We started outside the town hall and, in my case, followed the leaders through the often narrow streets of the town. My aim for this stage of the race was to keep the pace at between 7:30 and 7:45 per kilometre (12 to 12 ½ minutes per mile) and whenever my pace increased above this speed I would deliberately slow down and let myself drift slowly back through the field, being careful not to allow the gap between myself and the walker in front to become too big as I may need to rely on them for directions. There was only one time that I went around a corner to find the street in front of me empty but fortunately most corners were well marked with green arrows so I didn’t have any problems.

I arrived at the Parc Des Sports, where we would be racing over a 1.982km circuit for the remainder of the event, 2 hours and 23 minutes in to the race and in 31^st pace, and then started to race!

Around and Around:

For me this was probably the most uneventful race of this distance that I have ever done. I’m not complaining. The opposite actually. The race went perfectly. I didn’t have any really low points during the race or any real problems. I simply walked around the circuit lap after lap after lap.

At the end of each lap I would pass the electronic timer and then see my name on the TV together with my cumulative distance and current position in the field, and as the distance grew, the position slowly came down. There was never a time when my position went up, meaning that throughout the race I was passing people which gave me huge motivation.

And just past the TV screen either Jim and/or Sarah would be waiting to feed and/or water me. It was a 25 ½ hour eating and walking festival. And there was also an aid station approximately half way around the circuit which I would often grab another drink or a banana from as I walked past.

Roubaix 28 hour race - fueled by coke — Fueled by coke!

Unlike recent races where I have tried to remain sugar free for as long as possible (and in the Thames Path 100 I completed the whole 100 miles without any sugary food or drink at all) I had decided that I would fuel myself mainly on coke, fruit and biscuits along with ham and crisps, and at least every second lap (every 4km) Jim or Sarah would hand me something to eat.

I was in paradise. Having a great race. Something to eat at least every half hour. What more could I ask for?

My lap times were extremely consistent too. Averaging around 15:30 to 16:00 per lap in the early stages and then slowing a little once it was dark, but with a fastest lap of 14:48 and a slowest lap of 18:08 (I stopped for a quick toilet break) I can’t complain, and most laps of the 94 laps I completed were in the 15 to 17 minute range.

The circuit consisted of about 300 meters on a compacted ash track which would have been very messy if it had rained throughout the race, but turned out to be a great surface other than the occasional small stone that would bounce up in to my shoe – I had to stop three times during the race to remove stones from my shoes but this wasn’t a major issue. And the rest of the circuit consisted of three separate out and back sections on a tarmac surface, with one being dead flat and the other two being slightly uphill – but only with a few meters of elevation change so nothing to worry about.

Roubaix parc des sports circuit

I found myself getting into a rhythm and the laps flew by. And with the three out and back sections we got to see the other athletes throughout the race which was fantastic, and occasionally I would use the opportunity to calculate how many minutes or seconds I was behind someone and then check again on the next out and back section to see whether I was closing the gap. This became especially useful in the last few hours of the race.

I passed 100km shortly after midnight in a time of 13 hours and 18 minutes. Not my fastest time for 100km in a race of this distance but something I was completely comfortable with. My aim had been to complete the first 100km in 13 hours flat but I was happy with 13:18.

And I arrived at 100 miles in a 28 minute PB of 21 hours and 45 minutes, and was still going strongly and still moving up through the field. From memory I was in about 14^th place at this stage.

I wanted to achieve a decent distance over 24 hours too as I wanted to qualify for the prestigious Paris-Alsace race which is by held each June and entry is by invitation only. Last year my best distance for 24 hours was 172km and the cut-off for invitations appeared to be 173km, so I wanted to beat that distance. I didn’t actually intend to do Paris-Alsace next year though. It is an extremely brutal race held over 5 days on the roads of France with at least one stage being very mountainess (and I don’t enjoy hills as we found out at Chateau Thierry earlier this year) and not something that I want to do until I am a little more experienced. But at the same time I wanted to prove to myself that I could qualify if I wanted to do the race.

And I managed to complete 176.6km in 24 hours by which stage I was in 10^th position overall. And immediately after the race the Paris-Alsace organiser invited both myself and Suzanne to compete next year. Suzanne has accepted but I have declined the invitation.

200km New Zealand Race-Walking Record:

Next on the agenda was to get through to 200km in less than 27 hours and 40 minutes. Having passed 100 miles in 21:45 I had almost six hours to complete less than 40km and thought that would be a breeze. But for some reason I slowed a little in the next 10km and by 24 hours I knew I still had to concentrate on the job at hand if I was to achieve my goal.

Because the circuit was a 1.982km lap which we had started after already walking 18.5km, the 200km mark was not at the end of a lap and I was actually going to have to cover 200.9km in order to get an official time for 200km. At the speed I was doing 900 meters equated to about 7 minutes, so I actually had 3 hours and 40 minutes to cover 24.3km. Easy to achieve at the start of the race but I had already been walking for 24 hours!

Roubaix 28 hour race - paced by Sarah Lightman — Sarah pacing me

This is where Sarah comes in to the story big time. I don’t remember exactly when, but at around 24 hours Sarah started pacing Suzanne for a while as Suzanne was struggling. They did 12km together in total so I guess it must have been sometime after 25 ½ hours in to the race that Sarah then started to pace me. Initially she would walk with me for one lap, let me walk a lap alone, and then walk with me another lap. The company was great and my pace picked up just enough to give me confidence that I could get the record.

Jim continued to feed me regularly too and it got to the stage where I was eating every lap as well as drinking coke at the aid station half way around. Things were going really well. I moved into 8^th place on the 200km lap and completed that lap (200.9km) in a new New Zealand 200km record time of 27 hours, 27 minutes, and 12 seconds!

No Time For Celebration:

The problem was that two laps before reaching 200km we worked that the guy in 7^th place was only six minutes in front of me, and on the same out and back section during the 200km lap he was only three minutes in front of me. We also worked out that it was possible for me to complete another two full laps after finishing the 200km lap meaning that there was a very strong chance that I could move in to 7^th place before the end of the race if I kept pushing it. So no time for celebration other than to grab a can of coke from Jim and keep on walking.

It turned out to be an aniti-climax though as half way around the penultimate lap I had almost caught 7^th place when he stopped at the toilets! Must have been desperate to stop with less than 25 minutes still to race.

But I had built up momentum and I kept the pace going right through to the finish with two of my fastest laps of the race.

In the end I completed a total of 205.090km in the 28 hours and finished in 7^th place. By far the best ultra-distance race performance of my life.

Some Analysis:

Firstly, I wore my Fitbit during the race and was staggered after I finished to find that in each 14 hour half I had walked an almost identical number of steps – 112,500 steps in the first half and only 500 less steps in the second half.

Looking at my lap splits I walked almost exactly 105km in the first 14 hours and 100km in the second.

Only 500 less steps but 5,000 meters less distance.

When I calculate my average stride length, less than 500 meters of the the 5km slow down in the second half was due to the reduced number of steps. The remaining 4.5km slow down was due to a 4 centimeter reduction in average stride length!

It’s incredible to think that if I had maintained the same stride length throughout whole race I could have walked almost 210km.

Next, my lap splits. Once we were onto the circuit I completed 94 laps in 25 hours and 34 minutes. An average lap time of 16:19.

My fastest lap was 14:48 which I did twice (laps 4 and 5) and my slowest was one of my toilet stop laps – lap 74 which took 18:08.

30 laps took between 15:00 and 15:59 and 44 laps took between 16:00 and 16:59.

52 laps were slower than my 16:19 average and 42 were faster.

My 68^th and 69^th laps were my 7^th and 5^th fastest. This is because I was lapped by the race leader just after 151km and decided to sit on his shoulder for a couple laps – I lasted 2 ½ laps before decided to ease the pace a little. You can see the little peak in my Day 2 Fitbit graph above at 7am when my steps per 5 minutes increased by about 30 steps for a short period.

And outside of laps 69 and 70, my last two laps (laps 93 and 94) were my fastest since lap 24, almost 20 hours earlier!

Roubaix 2015 laps 1 to 33

Roubaix 2015 laps 34 to 66

Roubaix 2015 laps 67 to end

I passed 100 miles during lap 73 and 200km during lap 93. Both are circled.

And lastly, when I look at the distances recorded for each athlete at 24 hours and then at the finish, I covered more distance in the last four hours than everyone but one person – 28.4km!

Some Photos:

Roubaix 28 hour race team — Jim, Sarah, and Suzanne

Roubaix 28 hour race exhausted — It’s over! And these feet have just carried me 205km!

Injinji Toe socks:

In all my races and long training walks this year I have been coating my feet in 2Toms Anti-Blister powder with great success. Very few blisters compared to usual other than the Privas 72 hour race where my feet were badly damaged by blisters (see photos here).

So for Roubaix I decided to use both 2Toms Anti-Blister powder and Injinji toe socks.

The result: one very small blister on the small toe of my left foot (one of the three toes that lost toenails at Privas) and some blistering on the sides of both heels.

Also a small hole on the big toe of my left foot (the big toe of the sock, not my foot).

I was wearing the Injinji Performance Liner sock which is much thinner than the normal Injinji socks and I think the idea is to wear another thin pair of socks over the top which is something I will do next time as I think that would prevent the heel blisters.

Overall I was happy with the result.

What Next?

That is it for 2015. I have completed six races in total. Five of them have been 100 miles or further and the other was a marathon. All six races were within the last six months so I think I deserve a break.

The plan is to take between 6 and 8 weeks of almost total rest and then start working on some race-walking technique before starting a buildup to my 2016 races.

Thanks Jim and Sarah:

Lastly, I want to thank Jim and Sarah once again for their fantastic work in supporting both me and Suzanne (who finished 3rd female with a distance of 185.629km).

Obviously it is your job to support Suzanne, Jim – given that you live together. But I wouldn’t have achieved the distances and times I did without the support and encouragement you gave me during the race. Thanks.

And Sarah, I look forward to reciprocating when you race Roubaix next year 🙂