Hearing rain tapping down on the tent throughout the night, we were loathed to get up and face the prospect of putting the tent down and getting soaked! By 7.30 am we could procrastinate no more and we unzipped the tent to ‘face the music’. We rolled the ‘outer’ compartment of the tent into a black bin-liner and shoved the ‘inner’ part and poles into the tent bag. We found shelter for cereal and croissants (with Nutella -I am addicted!) and wearily used the trusty (?) SatNav to find the marathon start-point. Although initially raining, the sky soon cleared and it became a hot and humid day. Fuelled by a delicious ‘Pain au raisin’, (which Hannah also smeared with a thick layer of Nutella!) the miles began notch up and the road wound steadily towards the town of Epinal. With no major hill-climbs today I just had to contend with the creaking (yes, literally!) left Achilles and achy right knee… My spirit really lifted with 4 miles to go and felt on quite a high – another marathon done and another 42 km closer to Trafalgar Square!
The alarm went off at 6 am this morning but we did not rush out of bed. There’s something about waking up in a tent and realising that it’s only 9 degrees Celsius that makes you want to roll over and go back to sleep and stay under the warmth of the duvet! We were up by 6.20 am though, mindful of how much tougher the running is in the heat of the day. We said our farewells to Keith and Lesley, Hannah’s parents, who have to head back to the ferry in Calais today. They both supported us hugely from Bellinzona near the Italian border, right over the Swiss Alps to here in the Alsace region of France. In that time we completed 8 marathons and faced flooded-campsites, huge thunderstorms and cold night-time temperatures. This did not deter Keith and Lesley though and they kept smiling and helping us along in so many ways every day. We will miss them and hope to go camping (in their ‘mansion’ tent!) again in the near-future. I felt better than yesterday on the run and I can’t really explain why. The feel-good endorphins I heard that you get from running / exercise just didn’t materialise yesterday! Today though the first hour passed without difficulty, it was cool and I took on cereal and croissants. The second hour consisted of climbing over 700m up endless hairpin bends; this got the heart-rate right up and I seemed to get into top gear to reach the top. I quite enjoyed it! The next couple of hours were slightly downhill, not so steep that the quadriceps scream at you but enough to run on ‘cruise control’ for a while. On the 4-hour mark, Hannah announced that we had 4 miles left and that felt to me like we had reached the ‘finishing straight’! 40 minutes later, lifted by some tunes on the ipod we had covered the 42 km (26.2 miles). I stretched, hydrated and we set of to pitch our tent. The Alsace is a lovely part of the world and, if the weather holds, we hope to enjoy an afternoon of resting weary legs on the campsite! Hannah slept with her ski hat on last night – here in the Alsace it is only 9 or 10 degrees Celsius at night… I began running with gloves but it very quickly warmed up as the sun came up and by midday it was a pleasant 27 degrees Celsius. The route today was undulating and scenic and the roads were mostly quiet. I felt somewhat lethargic though and I struggled to take my mind away from the aching knee and Achilles whilst running! When I feel more ‘on-form’ my mind can be elsewhere and the miles seem to tick by. The final few miles today were really arduous as the heat became a factor and I just had to persevere! Tomorrow Hannah’s Mum and Dad, Lesley and Keith, finish their holiday with us and return to the UK. We will miss them enormously; their support and good-humour (on occasions through torrential rain and floods!) has been unbelievable. Probably still half-asleep, I missed a signpost within the first mile today and ran a couple of miles up a hill in the wrong direction! Leaving my phone in the car for good measure, I frustratingly had to re-trace my steps and apologise profusely to Hannah who was waiting patiently on the RIGHT road, wondering where I had got to! After an hour or so we pulled in to speak to Neil Pringle on his BBC Radio Sussex breakfast show. He asked where we were and what the toughest part of the challenge has been so far. I opted for Day 1 just as it was so incredibly hot and I spent the afternoon inching along wondering quite what I had let myself in for! The route today was quite industrial and I found myself running through road works alongside huge Heavy Good Vehicles! I had a patch of ‘running on empty’ in the middle of the marathon and realised I had depleted my glycogen levels after 17 miles or so. It’s never a pleasant feeling! Hannah came to the rescue (not for the first time) with cheese and ham croissants and with the miles ticking by once again my spirits lifted. It was also a real boost to morale to cross the border into France! From here we head north-west all the way to Calais. There are still hundreds of miles to run and many, many marathons ahead… but we are getting there step by step! The mountains seemed to recede even further behind us today as we passed rolling foothills towards the city of Basel. I had to scale one lung-busting 690m climb but the views from on-high were super. I felt relatively fresh today and the miles ticked by. I had no real complaints of sore legs or torn muscles at the end-point and, after the ordeals we faced in the first week or two, I appreciate feeling injury-free! Basel lies at the border of Switzerland, France and Germany and we drove ahead to visit the historic centre of the city which is located on the banks of the river Rhine. We pottered about for a few hours in the old streets and tucked into a good meal. We then polished off perhaps the most expensive bar of (Swiss!) chocolate you could hope to find – delicious! With increasingly achy legs, we decided to rest up today. It’s blissful not to get up at the crack of dawn and it gave us the chance to go food shopping, sort the laundry, plan the route, do the blog and, most importantly, rest the legs! The Swiss weather has been quite chilly and wet but we have enjoyed the comfort of Hannah’s folk’s big tent... Keith and Lesley have been great company, really supportive and I have eaten extremely well since they joined us!
During the night the rain tapped steadily down on the tent and we knew we faced the prospect of a very wet marathon! With no respite in the downpour by 7 am, we got up, packed the car and returned to the finish-point of yesterday’s marathon. Sheltering from the rain, I put extra plasters on my toes and plenty of Vaseline where I guessed chaffing maybe an issue after an hour or two! I set off and was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t too cold, quite enjoyable in fact… I would swap running in the rain to running in the 40 degree heat of Rome any day! Hannah did a sterling job navigating through the city of Luzern and kept smiling despite getting frequently soaked. After we climbed away from the hills surrounding Lake Luzern the landscape began to change and the towering snow-topped mountains of the Alps were replaced by rolling green hills. Running through farmland once again, the sun soon came out. I switched into a dry pair of socks and trainers as the skin on my feet was beginning to disintegrate in the now-soggy pair! I dug in with aching legs for the last 5 or 6 miles and was happy to see Hannah waving at the roadside signalling the end of marathon 24. We drove ahead to a campsite and were joined by Hannah’s folks who had kindly put the tent down this morning (in the rain!). It was ‘all-hands-on-deck’ to put the tent back up again and it soon dried out between the rain showers. 24 marathons in 26 days and 600 or so miles completed from Rome – it’s amazing to look back at all the landscapes, cities and experiences we have had so far! Today the marathon followed a lovely route around Lake Luzern here in the Swiss Alps. The road afforded magnificent views across the water and I followed a bike path almost all the way. When the road passed through a tunnel, the bike path often passed around it - the Swiss really do build their transport infrastructure in style! Depite extremely sore legs today, I was running with a real sense of just how privileged I am to be here. Just to experience this place, with lovely sunshine and warm weather is unbelievable. To be here with such support, from Hannah (and, for 10 days, her parents Keith and Lesley) is great. I'm stiff, achey and blistered... but I am a lucky chap indeed! Senior Lecturer, Gary Brickley, sent me a report about some fitness testing we did at Brighton Uni before we left the UK. Hannah studied her Exercise Science degree here! The report is attached below. Perhaps I'll have the opportunity to do the test again upon completion of the run home from Rome (if we get there!!) and compare the results. My heart rate is definitely lower when running now - but then my legs are infinitely more painful too! PHYSIOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF JOHN DWYER JULY 2011 We carried out an incremental test to determine your lactate threshold and energy cost of running prior to your huge Rome to London marathon challenge. All the tests were carried out on the Woodway treadmill in the research lab set at 0.8% which is a true 1% gradient. This mimics outdoor conditions. The graph gives a good indication of the heart rate and blood lactate response at the different speeds. We started at 9km/h and progressed to 15km/h at 3 minute intervals. Your physiology prior to this challenge seems very well conditioned and you should be able to sustain 13-14km/h if aiming for a faster marathon- which is a sub 3.15h. Of course this depends on how you would pace the marathon, but the lactate threshold around 13km/h suggest you are very well conditioned. We also measured the expired air to determine the oxygen cost and the calorific cost of running. At 10km/h this equates to 12kcal/min rising to 15kcal/min if you were to run at 12km/h. Bearing in mind the number of challenges you are attempting, a 10km/h seems more feasible. This works out as around 3060kcal during your marathon run period of just over 4 hours. You may well have a problem trying to get the calories in during your challenge. Your run is about being very efficient and the data from our testing suggests you are very good at burning fats below 11km/h so if you stay at this intensity you should not have major problems with glycogen depletion provided you refuel after each day. Good luck with the challenge and keep me posted. Gary I have put an article from the West Sussex County Times about the marathons under the 'Press' tab. Take a look if you have 2 minutes!
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