A bit of Badwater to start 2025

My favourite race picture of all time is of me in the Namib desert. Taken in November 2019, it was stage 1 of the BTU Desert Ultra. You can’t see my face. I don’t know if I was smiling, grimacing or crying. But you can see that there was no-one in front of me. For the first time in my (adult) life, I was leading a race. I went on to win the stage and spent the night as the race leader. I had utterly broken myself with the effort to win that stage and hobbled, staggered and crawled through the rest of the race to finish 8th. But I loved every minute of it.

I have run a lot of races. 1000s of miles in hundreds of races. But the last race I won was the Year 6 skipping race (that’s skipping with a rope, to be clear) at Guilden Sutton Primary School in 1989. Maximum points for Peckforton House in my final year at primary school. Since then, winning the race has never been the point. It has always been about seeing how far and hard I can push myself. That journey has delivered peaks of delight and troughs of despair.

I don’t know what I was doing on the Badwater website on New Years Eve. Honestly. This is a website that should have been blocked on my internet browser. An alert should have flashed up on Judith’s phone ‘He’s at it again’. Before you could say ‘private browser’ I had signed up to a little 267 mile (430km) virtual challenge …….what could possibly go wrong?

The concept is simple. Run a total of 267 miles in 31 days. An average of 8.67 miles a day (thanks for that Enda Brady ). Everyday. And my only goal when I set out, hungover (still, at 3pm) for my first run on 1st January was to complete. It looked like a great way to kickstart the year. Then I started to do……well…….okay. Kind of top 10. Then top 5. And then I worked out that the person who would top the leader board on the 31st January would not necessarily be the person who completed 267 miles earliest in January. It would be the person who did it in the lowest cumulative time.

11th January was the point where this went from being just a challenge to a race. It was icy in London so I swapped the Thames Path for the gym and realised that I can run fast, for a long time on the treadmill. It became a race that was as much about how I completed the miles rather than just if I completed the miles. It was also about how much pain I was prepared to endure along with the boredom of running on a treadmill. I entered into a ridiculous sparring match with Miko Devedzic , as we pushed each other to run faster and faster. 6:20 a mile……6:10 a mile…….6:00 a mile……5:50 a mile……5.40 a mile. I will admit it became a bit silly and mildly hazardous. Fun though.

I stopped the treadmill for the last time at 08:00 on 30th January after exactly 267 miles. The good people of Puregym Lewisham can rest easy knowing they won’t have to watch me breaking myself on the treadmill anymore.

At 28 hours 37 minutes and 20 seconds I had completed the 267 miles in an average of 6:26 per mile and came 1st. Winning a race that I didn’t even think I would complete when I started.

The 11 year old me in my red t-shirt run-skipping across the line on the playing field in Guilden Sutton in 1989 is bursting with pride.

Running is like therapy for me and I always reflect on the impact that races and challenges have on me when I’ve finished. Given this was a virtual race so I was based at home, slept in my own bed, could eat what I wanted and run when I wanted I was not expecting it to have much of an impact. But it did.

I learnt that I don’t quit when it gets hard.

I learnt that it’s okay to be selfish sometimes.

I learnt that you need to be mentally flexible.

I learnt that I am resilient.

Most importantly, I learnt that if you want to win, you have to work out how to win and work hard to make that happen - not rely on the process to deliver the result you want or think you deserve. There are so many parallels here to my professional life and the way that I work. I’ve read books about this but they haven’t really come to life until now. It is just so blindingly obvious. We’re all usually so keen to dive straight into the ‘doing’ that we don’t spend enough time planning and working out how to be successful.

As the start of training for the year goes, it has been a blast. An amazingly supportive global group of people all encouraging each other to do as much as they thought possible, no matter how fast they were moving. And a light bulb popping in my head to boot.

Next stop Grand Raid Ventoux by UTMB on 25th April where the ‘win’ will be completion – I’ve got 2 and a half months to work out what the strategy is and to work hard to make it happen.