Still Running (weakly). Issue 172

PAST – inspiration – “I was interested in how far I could run in a day, but nothing beyond that,” said Mark Pickard, when I interviewed him at a Sport for All weekend at Tanners Hatch Youth Hostel in the late 1980s, and asked him if he had ever considered tackling multi-day events – the 48 hours, or the 6 days.

You see, Mark had form.  He had held the UK 24-hour record for a while, running 163.7 miles in 1981.  He had also run over 200 consecutive sub-3 hour marathons.  And he demonstrated inhuman powers of recovery during his career, once running a 10-miler in 50:03 on a Saturday afternoon before coming a close second in the London to Brighton the next morning!  He finally won that race in 1988.

He did come a cropper, though, after his first attempt at the 24-hour challenge, a race which ran from Saturday to Sunday.  He had completely underestimated the effort that that would require, because he had also entered a 20-miler on that Sunday afternoon!  Even he found that beyond him, as he could not walk properly, let alone run!

His book, Evidence of a Misspent Youth, if you can get hold of a copy, is a masterpiece of understated obsession and the hilarious ingenuity required to feed it.

PRESENT – perspiration – Last week, at the EMU event in Hungary, Megan Eckert of the USA set a new women’s world 6-day record of over 636 miles, adding 33 miles to her own US women’s record, and 30 miles to the overall US record.  She ran more than 1,000km in 6 days, something that only six men have ever managed (though records do conflict on this.)

They are James Albert (USA) and George Littlewood (UK) in 1888, Yiannis Kouros (Greece) firstly in 1984, lastly in 2005, Jean-Gilles Boussiquet (France) in 1992, Matthieu Bonne (Belgium) in 2024, and Ivan Zaborsky (Russia) in 2025.

Eckert’s is a remarkable feat, probably bringing a women’s world running record as close as any has ever been to the male equivalent.

2026 has seen many world records, a fact which prompted me to ponder which of them is the greatest.

Is it Sabastian Sawe’s first sub-2 hour marathon?  Or Josh Kerr’s mile record, beating a 27-year-old mark?  And where do the new men’s 110 metres hurdles and women’s 100 metres hurdles records rank?  Or Alison dos Santos’s breaking Warholm’s 400 hurdles record?

Cutting to the chase, it must surely come down to a contest between Sawe, Kerr and Eckert, but how do you compare performances in events that are so popular with one that is so niche?  How many people have ever run a marathon?  Estimates say 50 to 80 million.  A mile?  Billions.  And how many have attempted a 6-day?  Ummm……

Like Mark Pickard, but not to the same week-in, week-out extent, I’ve done some pretty extreme races in my life – 24 hours round a 400-metre track, 24 hours on the road, Quadrathon (which is basically an Ironman triathlon with a 50km race walk thrown in for good measure), Alpine Marathon 78km, South Downs 80 miles, 100 miles race walk – but I was never tempted into the world of multi-day events.

Despite the rest of the world’s woeful wimpiness in not attempting a 6-day, I’ve got to give the gold medal to Eckert.  The training.  The planning.  The focus.  And the hour-by-hour execution.  Astonishing.  It’s a whole different world. 

FUTURE – suggestion – People say, train hard, race easy.  Rubbish!  Race easy if you’re happy with that lukewarm, half-hearted, lacklustre personal best.  But if you really want to know what you’re made of, you’ve got to lay it all out there.

The hard training doesn’t make the race any easier; it just means you can go faster.

So I say – instead of train hard, race easy – train complicatedly, race simply.

Because, for something as seemingly simple as putting one foot in front of the other (we’re not gymnasts or hammer throwers, are we?) the training can appear complicated.

For the classic 5km, 10km, half marathon and marathon distances, we must undertake long runs so that we can last the distance at a decent pace, do tempo runs to develop how far we can run at our target speed, run hills for leg strength and form, and sprint for raw speed to make the tempos seem easier.

Training seriously has to be multi-layered, in this way.  It is about working on all of your “gears” in the different sessions, so that, on race day, the speed, strength, speed-endurance and sheer stamina all come together to give you the best possible opportunity to deliver an optimum performance.

And then there’s the warm-up and the warm-down, and the easy runs, and the stretching, and the gym, and the foam roller and the ice baths……….

But, on the day, it’s simpler.  Yes, you have to do the right warm-up, but once the gun goes off, you only have one thing to think about – am I going at the right speed to achieve the best possible outcome?