Category Archives: Ultrarunning

‘Hardest Geezer’ Russ Cook enjoys a day off running after epic Africa journey

Posted on by

Endurance athlete from Worthing says he is ‘just trying to soak it all in’ after completing 352-day, 9,940-mile run

After sinking a strawberry daiquiri and a few beers and enjoying a reunion with his girlfriend after more than a year apart, Russ Cook, AKA the “Hardest Geezer”, who completed his 9,940-mile (16,000km) run along the entire length of Africa on Sunday, woke up feeling “a little bit frosty, a little bit tired”.

And for once, the 27-year-old endurance athlete from Worthing, West Sussex, who raised more than £700,000 for charity on his epic journey, was not pulling on his running shoes. It was all “quite, quite overwhelming”, he said.

Continue reading...

‘I don’t want this to end’: runner hits Melbourne after covering length of Australia in 150 consecutive marathons

Posted on by

Erchana Murray-Bartlett reaches end of epic journey from ‘tip to toe’ of Australia – smashing women’s record for consecutive daily marathons

Months after starting out from the tip of Cape York, Erchana Murray-Bartlett is set to complete her 150th consecutive daily marathon in Melbourne on Monday, finishing a record-breaking journey through Australia’s eastern states.

Murray-Bartlett set out in August to run more than 6,200km, raising money for the Wilderness Society and awareness of Australia’s extinction crisis – just days before Ned Brockmann began his 4,000km run from the west to east coast.

Continue reading...

‘There’s magic in misery’: ultramarathon runners cross Death Valley – in a drought

Posted on by

A hundred athletes are picked each year for the 135-mile race. This time the climate was especially brutal

In the Badwater Basin at the bottom of California’s Death Valley, the air feels like a giant hair dryer and the pavement can melt the soles of your shoes.

Yet on Monday night, 100 of the world’s top endurance runners set off on what has become known as “the world’s toughest foot race”, carving 135 miles of terrain through one of the planet’s most extreme climates at the most intense time of year.

Continue reading...

An ultramarathon ends in tragedy: runners describe horror of Gansu race

Posted on by

Twenty-one competitors died in the freezing Chinese mountains, raising major questions about safety in the sport

At the starting line of the Gansu ultramarathon, it was cold but the sun was shining. One competitor struggled to warm up, even after jogging a quick 2km, and noticed some of the elite competitors were wearing shorts and shivering. In nearby towns, the temperature was reportedly already dropping and winds increasing, but the 172 runners didn’t know that.

In a widely shared account of the horror that followed, published online, the anonymous runner described the conditions that led to the death of 21 competitors and the admission of eight others to hospital, and sparked major questions about the safety of the increasingly popular endurance sport in China.

Continue reading...

Not a sprint: endurance experts on how to make it through lockdown

Posted on by

Marathon runner Eddie Izzard, solo sailor Pip Hare and explorer Levison Wood explain what they have learned about enduring the seemingly unendurable

It just goes on and on, doesn’t it? Despite the millions of vaccinations, and Boris Johnson’s “roadmap” for easing the lockdown, this pandemic is feeling increasingly like an endurance test – a marathon, followed by another marathon, followed by another. Or trudging for miles and miles across the desert for day after day. Or sailing alone around the world, battling storms and loneliness. How do you keep going? There are people who know a thing or two about that – keeping going, endurance, deserts and storms. Perhaps they might even have some advice.

Continue reading...

Briton mails severed toes to Canada for use in notorious cocktail

Posted on by

Nick Griffiths sent two digits lost to frostbite to Yukon hotel renowned for Sourtoe special

The amputated toes of a British endurance athlete are to be given new life, as the centrepiece of a notorious Canadian cocktail.

As Nick Griffiths lay in a hospital bed last year after succumbing to frostbite in the Yukon Arctic race in northwest Canada, the world’s coldest ultra-marathon, his mind drifted to an advertisement he had seen earlier in a hotel in the territory.

Continue reading...