One Hundred Miles

A bunch of stuff has had me thinking about 100 miles over the past few months. This has always been my aim (100 miles in under 24 hours, and the other major ‘bucket list’ item being the West Highland Way Race), at the back of my mind, since starting to think about going longer.

I’ve kind of been watching from afar – route marking on the Thames Path 100, and watching some of the finishers at the end of the race, as well as watching a bunch of people on twitter (@mrafletch, @captwonderpants, @ogeerunner, @takeachallenge and many others) enter the South Downs Way 100.

Till now, I had been building up to races – 50K, 40 miles, planned 43 miles ‘Devil o the Highlands’, toying with the Oxford Ultra (63 miles), with a view to doing the Thames Path 100 next year. However, the more I see / read / hear, the more I think I should just jump right it. Even with a DNF I’d be learning loads (need to get out of that way of thinking actually)…

So, to that end, I just entered the Endure24 challenge, held at the end of June (same weekend as the SDW100). It starts at noon and you run as far as you can on 5-6 mile loops for 24 hours.
My furthest every run to date is 40 miles (in 7.5 hours), I’m hoping I can do at least 80, but we’ll see…

As always, I’m thinking of charity – Help for Heroes – please donate if you can http://justgiving.com/kjhughes