The endurance run that's like climbing Everest four times

Excitement. Nervousness. Uncertainty. Fear. I have felt the effect of this heady cocktail of emotions before – two years ago, after some friends persuaded me to enter the Dragon’s Back along the brutally mountainous spine of Wales.
That race took five days – much further than anything I had run before. A complete leap into the unknown. But I did it. And more than that, I surprised everyone (including myself) by finishing third in a race where two-thirds of the entrants failed to make it past day one.
Fast-forward two years and I am back at square one. This time I am facing a challenge that makes even the Dragon look tame: an attempt to set a new running record around the unremitting, undulating South West Coast Path. All 630 miles of it.
The South West Coast Path doesn’t ascend any mountain peaks, but it boasts 115,000 feet (35,052 metres) of total climbing – or, to put it another way, in terms of elevation gain, it’s like going from sea level to the summit of Everest four times.

Patrick Devine Wright finishing third in last year’s Grizzly race Photograph: www.photo-fit.net

It winds its way from Minehead in Somerset to Poole in Dorset, and most people bite the path off in stages and can take a lifetime to complete the entire route. I hope to run it in one go. The current record, set by Mark Townsend and Julie Gardener, stands at 14 days and 14 hours. To beat it, I will have to run more than two marathons a day, every day for two weeks.
I started thinking about it last summer and started training for it over Christmas. Since then, I have slowly but surely plucked up the courage to tell people what I am up to – if only to explain to them why I am so tired (from the training) or sore (from the niggles) or hungry (four meals a day now being routine).
This run is much more public than my Dragon’s Back effort. I am raising funds for three excellent charities – the Devon Air Ambulance, the South West Coast Path Association and the Wave project – and I am looking for people to help me out, putting me up for the night as I wind my way around the coast, and meeting me at checkpoints to help me fuel up and recuperate.
So far my plan has been met with lots of encouragement, and more than a few scratched heads. Why am I doing it? All I can say is what I learnt from the Dragon’s Back: unless you put yourself in a situation that is new to you and filled with uncertainty – whatever that is – you never really know what you are capable of.
So once again I am sticking my feet (and neck) out to try something that most would consider utter madness. And come the end of April, I will be something the wiser for it.
Click here to sponsor Patrick and to find out more about the causes he is raising money for. If you want to assist Patrick during his epic run (with logistics and accommodation), please contact him on patrick@devinewright.com

Running blog: How was your weekend running?

I’ve been hanging out at two different tracks in the last few days. In Friday I was in Prague for the European Indoor Athletics, on Saturday back home at my local running club, running at a pace that probably doesn’t even count as a warm up for most of those professional athletes.
If you’ve never been to an athletics meet - do it. This was my first indoor event and it was utterly fantastic. The atmosphere - even early on the first day of competition - was lively, with huge roars greeting any Czech competitors. I got to watch the awesome Katarina Johnson-Thompson on her way to gold in the Pentathlon, if not, alas, the world record - though that surely is just a matter of time. What you see in the stadium that the TV can’t catch is fascinating - the warm-ups, the stretches, the drills, the pigeon-paces the athletes take to measure their long jump run up ...
An indoor arena with its 200m track also gives you a real sense of just how fast the sprinters are - blink and you will miss the 60m hurdles (or Richard Kilty blasting past to gold) - and just how high they jump. I think pole vaulting god Renauld Lavillenie should have been given a shot at jumping over Prague castle. He would probably have sailed over.
As for my own running - Prague is not the flattest city and cobblestones make for interesting footing, but I had some treadmill slogs and one particularly glorious run to and round Letna Park, which overlooks the city and has views so fabulous you just have to stop for a breath to appreciate. Being surrounded by athletes at the event itself, you also can’t help but want to pull the trainers on and run, run run.
So how was your weekend running, did you catch any of the athletics on TV - and can I persuade you to go and watch some athletics live yourself?