We did It!

Saturday 29th May Graham and I successfully ran the fifty miles from Stone to Kinver in 10:57 and a bit to celebrate my 50th birthday at the end of June.

Four of us started at Stone at 07:11 a.m. Mark, Stewart Graham and myself. John, my brother-in-law came with us to take our video starting the run and then drive the car back to Kinver for Julie my wife to use it as the support vehicle. The plan was to run the first ten miles at around 9:30 minute miles and use these miles as a leveller to get us all to run as a group. From mile ten we would run at 9:30 minute miles for five minutes and walk for one minute all the way home stopping only to replenish our gels and water and for a little junk food  at mile 28. The temperature was cool and at first just a light rain.

Our first stop was at The Boat Inn in Penkeridge at mile 20. This was just to be a quick refuel stop but Stewart who had been running with a long term Achilles Tendon injury had to drop out. We were wet through and hung around a little too long at this point and got cold. It took quite some time to get warmed up again. Our next break was to be a food stop at mile 28 at the Fox & Anchor pub in Coven. I phoned ahead to Julie and we ordered chips for Mark and Graham and a burger for me. We would wash these down with cups of tea. We were also joined by Jill, Marks better half and his mom Kath. Mark would leave us here and travel back with Jill.

Graham and I then ran on through Wolverhampton. When we got to the Mermaid pub we realised that we were going to finish over a mile short of fifty. The Mermaid is a pub I’ve run to in the past on my long training days. So, we ran past the pub for .75 miles, turned around and ran back to it, then turned again and headed for home in the hope we would make the miles up.

We carried on to Lower Penn where we were joined by my 61 year old brother-in-law Malcolm. He would stay with us to the end and clocked up over thirteen miles. This was twice the distance he had ever run before. At Bratch Locks we met with Jacqui, Grahams wife and his son Jack along with my wife Julie. Julie unloaded our supplies from her car into Jacquis and headed back to Kinver. Once we got to Stewpony bridge, Jacqui was in her running gear along with young Jack and they both joined us for the last 1.65 miles. Mark re-joined us at this point too and stayed with us to the finish.

The finish was brilliant. Many of our friends and family were waiting in the car park of the Vine pub. Like many others, Julie was tracking my GPS signal on my phone through Endomondo using a laptop in the car. She was able to tell everyone where we were at any moment and that we were approaching the end. The Vine pub lies on the canal with the tow path on the opposite bank. As we came through a gate on the path we could hear shouts and cheers from the opposite bank. There we could see a hoard of mad people waving and screaming and holding up banners. As Graham and I ran into the car park to the finish we were met by a zillion kids, most of them my nephews and nieces and great nephews and nieces holding up a banner they made.

We had a great time at the pub. I do remember being very hungry but for some reason I couldn’t eat for over an hour. I did manage a couple or three pints of local beer though. My little brother Richard asked why we didn’t do it for charity. I said it would have been difficult to raise sponsorship money for the other events I run for specific charities. So, without my knowing, he went around the pub with a glass and got people to donate money without yet knowing what charity I would choose. He came back with £82.56 which I thought was a tidy sum for spontaneous money parting. I donated it to the NSPCC which when I ticked the gift-aid button, it came to £105.00. Well done Richie.

Although my watch gave up the ghost just before the finish, Grahams didn’t. We started at 07:11 and finished at 18:06. We had around 1.5 hours of breaks which wasn’t scheduled for and in actual running/walking time, we averaged around ten minute miles all the way.

The gels that kept us going were SiS blackcurrant and Hammer Gels. I had plain water in my camel-back and kept reple

nishing a 500ml bottle on my hip with an electrolyte powder and water mixed by Julie at some of the stops. Along the way I ate the occasional power bar and a burger at mile 28.

The next day, Sunday, my feet were hurting to walk on especially down steps. Monday afternoon I had to go to work to do a late shift and felt fine. Tomorrow, Friday, I will be going for another run of around 15 miles I hope. I’ll see as I go. Neither one of us suffered blisters and from what we can tell, no long lasting injuries. I do think I might lose a couple of toenails though. I did that damage the week before though, running down hill at The Swift Half Marathon.

I quickly put a video together which really needs some more work doing on it. I’ll re-mix it at a later date when I get some more material from others that were there on the day.