After 45 days + of running, the first person to finish the 3,100 miles – and thus the race winner – is Sarvagata Ukrainskyi .

Around 5.35 am UK time Alan Young emailed me to let me know that Willia had passed 2,700 miles (thus leaving a ‘mere’ 400 miles to go.

A little later, after William had turned in for a brief night’s sleep, Alan added : “Another good day 118 laps and passed 2700 miles. Fine conditions and low humidity. Very strong and vey focused. Lights out 00:34.”

William has been running very consistently for quite some time now. The previous day Alan had written : “119 laps today. Super day all round. Not too hot, not to humid.” Alan commented also that William was “…really eating loads ice cream and very little race food.”
So there you have it – the secret to turning in a top athletic performance when you are in your 60s is to eat as much ice-cream as possible.*

To put things in a better context though – For the last 21 days William run between 61 and 68 miles per day. At one point, following his calf strain, William was 69 miles behind the cut off distance – but now he is 23 miles ahead of the cut-off (and by the time you read this will probably have increased this figure).

Those of you who follow William’s races regularly will be pretty much used  to seeing him turn out amazing performances, but I do just want to stress a couple of the figures again.

For the last 3 weeks, every day, William has covered 61 to 68 miles a day. While also recovering from a calf injury. And at the age of 60.

There are quite a few very respectable runners who do less that 61-68 miles per week.

For most people, even averagely fit people, running 68 miles in a month wouldn’t be bad going.

So imagine taking something like a decent weekly training mileage, running it a day, and repeating this for 21 days, while also only getting around 5 hours sleep per night.

 

 

 

 

*As long as you remember to also run 3,100 miles in about 7 and a half weeks or less….