Grand Union Canal Race

I have just spent the day surrounded by complete and utter awesomeness.

I didn’t mean to. It just turned out that way.

My plan was to walk a little way along the Grand Union Canal, starting at Paddington, to see whether I could spot any ultra runners. I ended up walking the 12 miles from Paddington to Hamborough Tavern, where I stopped at Checkpoint 9 (mile 133). On the walk, I bagged three runners, James*, Kevin and David who went on to place 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively, and while at the checkpoint, I netted a further clutch, including Marvellous Mimi, who had run the route in reverse first and so was on mile 278!

At which point, my phone battery died, and I hitched a lift back to Paddington (mile 145) to watch a goodly number of the same runners finish.

145 miles. On foot. In one stretch. How amazing are these runners?

So. My day (or at least the first bit before my battery died) in pictures.

09:37 James Elson

10:20 Kevin McMillan

11:05 David Rowe

11:24 Onoda Wilcock

12:15 Mark Gregory

12:29 Rudi Vanden Berghe

12:42 Paul Ali

12:43 Geoff Smyth

12:46 Sam Kilpatrick

13:00 Woody Woodus

13:01 Philip A Smith

13:07 Terence Chiew

13:15 Sarah Thorne

13:22 Alayne Malkin

13:44 Tremayne Cowdry

14:17 Diane Roy

14:22 Jany Tsai

14:33 Peter Huser

14:34 Deti Gartner

14:51 Ian Davies

14:52 Ian Thomas

14:53 Richard Heath

15:01 Jennifer Aradi

15:10 Phil Stapleton

15:12 Anne Green

15:17 Mimi Anderson

15:20 Dudley Manning

15:29 David Hegarty

15:33 Martin Ehrensvard

*Who had covered 138 miles and still (a) smiled, (b) talked in coherent sentences, (c) recognised me out of context from a photograph and (d) went on to win. Impressive much?