Damian Hall - In It for the Long Run: Breaking records and getting FKT

His legs swelled prodigiously.

Ive never wanted anything so badly. Nothing in the whole world is more appealing right now than the simple but elusive pleasure of ceasing forward motion ceasing all motion and crumpling to the ground, to lie in that seductively soft and invitingly squishy, that irresistibly luxurious, bog.

Oh to allow my leaden eyelids to close, to be vertical and limp in that peaty swamp. As I shuffle pathetically through the dark, I gaze longingly at the dirty, wet ground, willing it to hoover me up. Even just for a fleeting moment. Oh, please let me sleep. Beautiful, lovely, not-being-awake sleep.

Its about 4 a.m. and Ive been on my feet for two days and one and a half nights and have run 180 miles. Im trying to break a record for running 261 miles on the Pennine Way. Everything was brill. But now everything is less brill.

My legs are disobedient lumps of mahogany. My feet abandoned me in the last bog. My backside growls at me (not like that well, actually, like that too). My Im too tired to list my other ailments. Theres a heavy monster on my shoulders, pressing me ever downwards. The powerful urge to flick the switch to off is overriding everything. Something we do every day without thinking has been banned, and has therefore become so despairingly appealing. Ill never neglect you again, sleep! Ive always loved you! Honestly, Ive always thought you were wittier and more attractive than boring old, criminally overrated wakefulness.

But a very little part of my very little mind knows that if I snooze, I may well lose. Plus Nicky Spinks said I cant.

Who knew running 261 miles would be a little bit difficult?

* * *

I was obsessed with football (in particular Arsenal Football Club). I was obsessed with the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration (in particular Captain Robert Falcon Scott). I was obsessed with 1990s Aussie popstress Natalie Imbruglia (I cant go into that for legal reasons). And Im obsessed with running. In particular, long distances in lumpy places bimbles, if you will.

Only one of those obsessions has led me to routinely rub Vaseline all over my bathing-suit area (yes, all over), repeatedly bonk in woods in the middle of the night (significantly less pleasurable than it may sound to the lay-ear), and eat alarming amounts of custard for breakfast.

But I truly feel sorry for people whove never done those things. I also feel sorry for people whove never face-planted into a bog or had a power sob, for people who have a full set of civilised-looking toenails. I feel sorry for people who dont have alarms stored for 5 a.m. and 4 a.m., for people who cant use the words disappointed or happy without placing the brilliantly versatile adjective super in front. I feel sorry for people who dont know the difference between a DNF, a DNS and the MdS (is this getting TDS?), or what FKT stands for. I feel sorry for people who dont run.

This is my horribly self-indulgent story about my often misguided but ultimately life-changing midlife-crisis adventures in ultramarathon running, where I went from completing a first marathon dressed as a toilet to a Great Britain international trail runner (at forty) in four years. And semi-accidentally broke a few records too.

This book is about the glorious if occasionally hurty joy of running long distances in lumpy places (and bogs), and the attraction of doing so outside of organised events. Running challenges, speed records and fastest known times (FKTs) may look like they offer the same thing, but can actually offer something very different. But why do so many people repeatedly bash themselves up doing impossible-sounding endurance challenges? It must be more than masochism, social media humblebrags and the chance to knock back double rations of Tunnocks bars. Mustnt it?

Ultramarathon is an American word accredited to ultrarunning pioneer Ted Corbitt in 1957, to describe footraces longer than the classic marathon distance of 26.2 miles. Technically an ultra can be 26.3 miles (though the shortest are usually 50k), all the way up to the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3,100-Mile Race (the distance isnt even the main insanity; runners go repeatedly around the same block in New York). A few are timed events, such as twenty-four-hour races where you see how many miles you can run around a track. A few are on roads (yuk). Some are in deserts, in jungles, in the Arctic. But the very best ones, Ive found, are around 100 miles and they take place in mountains (aka lumpy places). But this book should come with a warning, because this stuff is seriously addictive. I was warned too! But I didnt listen.

Its a niche sport, but lots of people do this stuff, and have been doing it for a very long time. Ultra-distance challenges are inherently testing, but they arent as difficult as they sound (you can hike lots, eat lots and chat to lots of like-minded loons). And despite no, partly because of the distances involved, it seems to make people inexplicably happy. But the best news is that you dont necessarily need to sign up for an event. You can pick a place and time, grab a mate and have a DIY adventure. And thats primarily what these things are: safe adventures. And they can be life-changingly meaningful.

* * *

When you next overhear someone in a pub say Were just not designed to run marathons, feel free to tell them that they couldnt be more wrong. Also feel free to ignore them and just sit there smugly in the knowledge that you know the opposite is true. (Thats probably what Id do.)

You see, running literally made us who we are today. It made us human. Only eating, sleeping and indulging in consensual team push-ups are more quintessential human activities than running.

Around seven million years ago our ape ancestors started coming down from the trees and turning into bipeds. But why did they give up speed, upper-body power and greater safety in the trees, in exchange for what on the surface looked like becoming slow and wimpy? Also, why do we have such little hair compared to other primates? In the whole history of vertebrates (good name for a book publisher, that), were the only running biped thats tail-less. We have ninety-five per cent of the same DNA as chimps. Yet noticeably we have an Achilles tendon and they dont. And a comparatively huge gluteus maximus (even if physios are forever decrying their weakness). Our feet are arched, while chimps are flat. Chimps dont have a nuchal ligament, which helps hold the head up high. Humans possess an extraordinary number of eccrine glands between two and five million that can produce up to twelve litres of sweat a day.

Even if you havent read the Fever Pitch of running, Christopher McDougalls Born to Run, youve likely guessed where this is going. All these idiosyncratic parts of our contemporary anatomy evolved to our advantage and that advantage allows us to run a long way.

The ability to run long distances to obtain food, via persistence hunting antelopes on the African savannah, enabled us to thrive as a species, to outlast the Neanderthals and other creatures with bigger claws and fangs, argue American biologist Dennis Bramble and anthropologist Daniel Lieberman. Antelopes were faster, but after a while they needed to cool down, so they slowed or stopped. We werent as fast, but because of world-class temperature regulation, we could keep going, following an antelope for hours. Finally the inadequate sweater (sounds like something you get for Christmas) would overheat, we would catch up and tuck in our serviettes