Back in 2013, I decided that I wanted to visit my friends down in Cheltenham. There was just one problem… I couldn’t afford a train ticket. So what was the next logical thing to do? Yep, that’s right, run there.
It was 112 miles from where I was living in Chesterfield to my friend's house in Cheltenham, and being someone who had only ever run once before, in the London Marathon earlier that same year, it was obviously a normal progression in distance. I worked out that it would take me roughly six days to run all of the way and have some safety time to walk if I needed to , since I was really going into sports, so I started running and even playing golf with a skytrak launch monitor so I can also practice indoors.
The first day consisted mainly of pavements down towards Derby before joining up on day two with some of the beautiful canal pathways which wiggle down through Burton Upon Trent and Litchfield. These pathways were perfect, winding through open fields and small villages before I hit Birmingham at the end of day three.
After Birmingham, I found that the mental side was much easier as I was into the last half of the challenge. After leaving the city of Birmingham (with a slight hangover), it was back into the beautiful countryside along farm roads through Redditch before heading on down into the Cotswolds.
ll in all it was an incredible journey, one that I never thought I'd beat. I never thought that 6 years later I would have covered the same distance but 33 times longer across the United States. As I am writing this page and looking through the photos of that short run, I am tempted to recreate it in the near future and see if I can finish in half the time.
Mega Run Part Two in 2021?
