As I’ve posted about before there is an online support group that has set its members the challenge of completing the distance between Land’s End and John O’Groats in 2015 through their training and events. According to Wikipedia that is a distance of 874 miles (or 1,407kms).
I’m a member of this group and have signed up to this challenge, although I have decided to extend it slightly to 1,600kms – or 1,000 miles. Initially this blog was about me completing 1,000kms of exercise in a year (a target I didn’t hit), but you can see how much fitter I’ve got as my target for 2015 was 60% greater.
There’s actually a fair chance that I’ll hit this target too. I’m currently about 50kms away from John O’Groats, so I should get there before the end of November. Then that gives me December to complete the additional 180kms or so.
There are no rules to the challenge – other than the distance covered – and most of the people in the group are primarily runners, so will have run just about every mile.
I’m primarily a swimmer, but I run and cycle [a bit] too. I didn’t think that I’d manage to swim 1,600kms in a year, but equally I didn’t want to ‘cheat’ and cycle the bulk of the distance, so I follow a simple algorithm:
- All swimming distance is multiplied by 3
- All running distance is counted as is
- All cycling distance is divided by 4
My totals (with adjusted figures) so far are:
- Swimming – 357.46kms (1,072.38)
- Running – 195.07kms (195.07)
- Cycling – 358.77kms (89.69)
- Total – 911.30kms (1,357.14)
As you can see I’ve travelled almost exactly as far in water as I have on a bike – although the adjusted figures are then somewhat different. It’s also a pretty good total given that once I’d completed the big 24 hour swim in May I did almost nothing in June and July (a combined, adjusted total of 107.99kms). Fortunately I caught up a lot of my missed distance with a big October – an adjusted total of 220.43kms.
I’ll need to be dedicated through December, including into the Xmas period, but I expect to hit the 1,600kms target.
1000kmstowindermere 