On Friday I was, in a very minor way, part of the support team for “Fast Howard” (my name for a member of my running club), who was running the whole of Hadrian’s Wall in a day – all 84 miles of it. To complete this feat he had carefully planned every detail, including a speed which for him would be very slow and steady but for me would be, well, adequate – averaging about 8 mins a mile.
Several people ran different legs; Tony and Phil started with Howard at South Shields (Newcastle end of the Wall) at 4 am on Friday, which must have been pretty trying. I opted for the last leg, eight miles from Burgh-by-Sands to Bowness-on-Solway, timed to start at 17.28. This section is almost completely flat and I thought I would probably manage to keep up. In fact I need not have worried because it turned out that by the time somebody has run the eqivalent of a couple of marathions and then some, his velocity has dropped back a bit, and we didn’t start until about an hour later than this.
The evening was perfect, dry, sunny and warm, if anything a little too warm, and the route is very pleasant, through lovely villages and along tracks and footpaths. The only disadvantage is that we were unable to stop at any village pub on the way.
The feat was achieved in about 16 1/2 hours (I don’t have the exact time yet).
Howard was raising money for the Great North Air Ambulance and Age UK; if you feel at all inspired by his achievement, please consider sponsoring him:
www.charitygiving.co.uk/goateeh
It was 16 hours 21 minutes :star: :star:
Fantastic achievement! Love the ‘pony (?!) tail!
a fantastic effort from Howard…. :star: . I must say he looked knackered at Carlisle ; how he kept going I have no idea! 😯