Is This The Craziest Ultra Running Event In The World?

This is an event unlike any I've done before. 130 miles of running over five laps with a 24-hour cut-off. That's not all this event has up its sleeve. I don't know the route yet. We change direction on each lap and I have to collect pages from books as we go. It could be a disaster. It's just excruciating. Where's my squad? Probably the hardest thing I've had to push through. This is pretty disgusting. Before you say it, this might sound familiar, and that's because it is. It's based on the infamous Barclay Marathons in the United States, except I'm in the United Kingdom, also in Barclay. You can see how this one came about. It's exactly the same concept, albeit perhaps not quite as crazy, but it is endorsed by the man himself, Lazarus Lake, the founder of the Barclay Marathons. The hardest thing for an athlete to deal with is uncertainty, and the Barclay presents them with endless uncertainty. I think what makes the Barclay Marathons in the UK different and what makes it so special is when we do the whole event for charity. In keeping with the obscure nature of this event, in order to sign on, I had to bring along and donate a pair of running shoes. In fact, I actually had a couple going. Also, I had to add something to the food bank from their list. I opted for shower gel and size six nappies. Worst thing that can happen tomorrow is getting lost. That's a cross and up. I cannot do that. I don't know this area. There's a lot of rivers. There's also the M5 that runs through the middle of this. Right, time to get some sleep. See you bright and early tomorrow morning. I'm weirdly excited, but also very nervous. I like to be as prepared as possible for events, and you can't for this event. I don't really know the course. I'm not really meant to know the course. I don't know how to get to the books because they're in these weird boxes with riddles that you've got to unlock the box. It could be a disaster, but I'm also very excited. I feel very pro today because the precision guys have actually come along. Clearly, I need some help. I'm mostly going to do it in tubes. Is that all right? Don't know if you give the okay to us. I've got some cereal bars. That wasn't what I was looking for. A boost bar. Something to look forward to. My plan is maybe one or two of them per lap. Sodium-wise, I'm a big sweater, so it's a hot day. I'm going to go pretty full on with that, so 1,500. Top up with the capsules when you can. Cool. I think we're ready. Let's do this. We're approaching the first box. I found a friend, Mike, here running with me. We split it off into a few little groups. Time to see how much time we actually waste trying to figure out unlocking this first box. There it is. Four minus two, two, half of eight. Steal it for us. There you go. Easy. Stick with this guy. That's a big one. Thank you, man. Thank you. You got here much quicker than I thought you would. Yes. Got my pace. That was quick. Seven, two, six, seven, zero. Zero. Must eat chestnut. No. I'm going to get some of these from them. Century. All right. All right. Here we go again. It's a bit of an eerie one. Number four there. One, six, seven, zero. I haven't actually had to do anything yet, because I've been running with these guys, and they've been doing it for a bit of a lie. I got the raw end of the deal. I have to put the book away every time. Get dropped and then have to catch up. Well, that's the fourth checkpoint done. I found myself in a lovely group of guys, and a couple of them are quite familiar with the area, which is handy. I found myself coming into each checkpoint last, which is great. They're doing the equations and the riddles for me. Then I get dropped as I have to put the book away. I can't do it. Oh, the boxes are. That's literally a box. What's this wizardry? The year the tower built plus one. Where's the sign? That's cheating, isn't it? I was going to take a picture there. It didn't say it in the rules. Or is it on the stone? The plaque on the front here. Seven. Hello. Here again, Mark, contributing method lead. Fifteen thirty six or sixteen thirty six plus one. So, end with seven. Eighteen six seven. I can't get the staff these days. That sounded promising. We have to give this a good shrug, Paul. It won't open. You can try both directions, yeah? It's definitely, it's open. No one look. The other ones turn the other way, don't they? Seventy six. Can somebody remind me of my number as well? Top of the tower, it is the top of the tower. I rather meanly, we've just descended, just descended all the way down to the checkpoint. Now we've got to go back up this massive hill. Just enjoying my sweets. We're a little over halfway, aren't we? Been all right. I am obviously following these guys, but the navigation, it would have been quite hard. And I'm sort of just trying to memorise as much as I possibly can, because I imagine we're not going to stay together. And also ripping the pages out, it would appear. What about catching up the group afterwards? Yeah, that too. You going to run with me? I've got a car. Be all right. One Viva, is that just one? One, six, two, eight, two, eight. You did it, Mark. Yeah, I did it again. Right, teamwork. Well, rather menacing route planning going on there. Down the hill, back up the hill. Around the corner, then back down the hill. Whereas I could have just gone from one to the next, probably in about 200 metres apart. Anyway, that is most of the elevation for this lap done, I believe. So now, I tick along for the next sort of 15k, get back to base, stock up. Come on, Mark. All right, the other way. I thought that said sour cheese for a second there. I thought a lunatic would drink a sour cheese drink. I might do that. Well, that's the last checkpoint of lap one done. I got all my pages of the book, hopefully. I hope I haven't lost any. I've got a few kilometres flat now alongside the River Severn. I'm shuffling my way back to base. Stock up, assess what I'm doing. I've got another lap in me for sure. I am not sure about a third lap, but never say never. I give it my best. I'm running fine. Time-wise, make cut-offs at the moment, but I'm just not sure my body is conditioned to this at the moment. Thank God that's over with. Right, you got the Coca-Cola, didn't you? Got some dandelion and burdock. And a pork pie. Do you want a pork pie? How's it going? Good, yeah. Definitely could have done with more water out there. Yeah. Like the water station really floats together. Yeah, I went through the first. I was like, oh. You can only fill up. Yeah, and then like, oh, I don't need much more. Yeah. Oh, yeah, there's water there. I can fill them up for you. I might just, yeah. We can get another flask. Do you want them to take another flask with you? Uh, yeah, actually, that'd be a good idea. You know what? Feeling it a lot more than I was expecting after lap one. Definitely going out on lap two. It's going to be a lot slower. It's quite painful almost coming into the hall after each lap because obviously it gives you a get-out. Oh, look at this. Kind of invades an old classic, does it? Oh, yes. That hits the spot. That's good. I've lost two and a half kilos after one lap. So when I thought maybe I haven't got enough hydration on board, I definitely, yeah, need to sort that out. Get this show on the road again, eh? Looks like you're going to be self-navigating this time. You know what? Actually, I knew where I was the entire time. It was fine. I was actually navigating pretty well. There were a couple of bits where it was nice to get the reassurance or inside knowledge. No, no, I'm just kidding. Well done. Yeah, you too, mate, yeah. You going out in a second? Oh, yeah. We'll go out and try. Yeah. Might as well, right? Might as well. Good man. Right. Good luck. Oh, god, the caffeine. Enjoy the football. Good luck. See you around, mate. I just want to wash it in a bit. Off you go. It's going to hurt a lot. I'm hurting already. Now I'm going to get lost because I'm on my own now. Or I can't do the maths to unlock the actual boxes. Do you have the codes written down? I did have. I sweat too much. So I'll have to do the maths again as I go. Fortunately, they're not too hard. I did do some of them. Right. I'm going to waddle down the road a bit whilst eating. Then I'll get running. I'll see you in a bit. I'm on my own now. I think I'm going to take first out onto the second lap. So this could all get horribly wrong and I get completely lost. Ah, it's adventure, isn't it? I am sort of missing my little squad I was running with. However, secretly, I think we're all kind of wanting to head out on our own for the second lap. I think at points it's really good having the other people there. They push you on at times when you maybe might have just eased off a bit too much. But there's other points where you're just having a low patch, they're pushing on and actually you'd ideally go a bit slower. Checkpoint number one done. It turns out we actually go the same way again on the second lap. On the third lap, which I guess technically for most people in the night, it goes the other way to really **** it. Actually, I just kind of got to follow the same tracks I did on the first lap. I have just got sort of like half a kilometer from that first checkpoint and suddenly panicked that I got the same page number as my first lap. Now, my page number has changed from 109 to 303, but I have got the right one. We're doing like an ultra marathon, but you've got to collect pages from books as you go around, it's a bit obscure. Yes, so I've got to sit. Oh, actually, it counts in person too. I'm a little bit nervous about this section, of course. I remember thinking as we were doing it, these paths are just all over the place in these fields and it's hard to see exactly where they went. Might be checking in again in a few minutes time, I'm completely lost in a field doing this. Done. I didn't have the courage to do it again with the UV light, but all is good, we're off again. Point number four incoming when I can get this gate open. I did it the wrong way. They change on every bloody one. You can tell I'm losing my sense of humor. Here we go again. Definitely feeling it. We've got a lot of elevation ahead of me now, this is the really tough bit. Here we go again. Part of me thinks Paul might be mischievous. He's changed around his little riddles. I'm just going to go straight to the top. Oh my goodness. I was literally about to go straight to the top and then look who I found. I found Cassie and our little baby Adeline and Reggie. Hello. I think that deserves a bit of a stop. What I'll do, I'll go to the top, get my page, and then I'll come down and see you. That's it. Anyone that's ever watched a GTN video before may know, and remember, I love a boost bar. Cue romantic music. Next checkpoint. I've got a bit of a dilemma ahead of me. One lap, two at the moment. I have actually got plenty of time ahead of me to probably get as much as four. I'll try to do the maths. Maybe not quite five laps in, but four laps for sure. If I kept going like this, maybe even with a bit of a drop-off. It's very tempting and it's at least to do another lap, a third lap. I know everyone is geeing me on to do that, but I also know the limit of my body. If I'm totally honest, it came to today thinking, well, the amount of running I've done lately, the two laps would be awesome. I just don't know. Oh, we'll just have to see, man. After optimistically considering a third lap, things went rather pear-shaped for me. Oh, man, I am feeling it. My ankle is killing. Now, I rolled my ankle towards the end of lap one, pretty much in the final kilometer of lap one, on typically the flattest part of the course, running through a field, and I didn't really think too much of it beyond that until about 25 to 30 kilometers later, it just started screaming at me out of nowhere. Now, I like to think I've got a fairly high pain threshold, but this was something else. I just started sweating instantly. I felt nauseous. I was wincing on every step. I pretty much just had to stop at times and just sit down and I was just shouting at my ankle. My body feels battered. What am I now? 70K in, so I've got about 16K to go. It's painful. I don't know why my ankle has just started hurting so bad. I rolled it on lap one towards the end. It's been fine, really, a bit uncomfortable, but my, it's just become excruciating. I cannot seem to, whatever I do, make it better. Man, this is going to be a long last 15K. This is so painful. I can get about a minute or so of running in, and then the pain just reaches a peak. Oh, it's horrible. Now, that is what this event is all about. I just paused for a bit actually to take my shoe off and tend to my ankle, see what's going on. The chap that's been running behind me for quite a while, I caught up, stopped and gave me half a banana, some crisps and got in touch with his partner who's back at base to make sure that she could look after me because she's a fitter therapist when I get in. It's just lovely, amazing. So far then, update, I have strapped my ankle up because I had some bandage stuff with me. I am going to try and walk and maybe jog a bit all the way back. So I've got about 11, 12K to go. Could be a long 11 or 12K. Hopefully, I can get some running in. I will get around, but my goodness, this is hurting. Still got 8K to go. I just need to stop feeling sorry for myself and just get on with this. I'm definitely getting tired. Just made a, well, not a big map or navigation mistake, but I spent a couple of minutes trying to figure out what way I was meant to go and I just got really confused and it was actually really obvious. So yes, definitely catching up with this tiredness and I think actually a lot of it is just my bloody ankle. It's really zapping a lot from me. It's amazing what I can do, but yes, this is quite a mental battle I'm having to go through right now with that. But anyway, I'm going to stop moaning or at least try. Let's get on with this, get running. Didn't realize I've had the pocket with all my pages in opened. 5K left. Looking good. Got your Lionel Sanders run on. Yeah, really. Probably the hardest thing I've had to push through. This is pretty disgusting. Well done. Thanks. That was a bit of a mental battle. Very frustrating. I managed to walk back to base at 16 very slow kilometers. So yes, I'm proud I got around two laps. Three laps was absolutely out of the question and quite frustrating because I was feeling good up to that point. Some amazing people went on to complete three laps. I do think four laps is possible. Five laps, I'm not so sure, but never say never. But obviously, it isn't just about how many laps you can do. There's some incredible people also out there just doing one lap and that was a huge, huge life achievement. I really came away from this event just respecting that side of things and just have had an amazing time meeting these incredible people, some new friends, and had an absolute blast. Who's had to complete and solve riddles partway around ultra marathons before? It was so much fun and we were doing it as a team. I'd like to say thank you to those people and also to Paul, the organizer of the event, because what I hadn't realized fully before this is this is a non-profit event. Everything is donated to charity. He donates thousands of pounds every year to charity and has a full-time job alongside this event business, so absolutely amazing. Also, Precision Fuel and Hydration for popping along and keeping my nutrition on point. They probably saved my day, if you can call it that. As I say, amazing, amazing day. If you guys are interested in the Barclay Marathons, be that the UK or the US, definitely check it out. The UK one, entries are opening, I believe, as we speak, and I think we might have to sort out some entries for you guys, so stay tuned and keep an ear out on the GTN channel coming up soon. If you enjoyed today's video, please give it a thumbs up, give it a like. See you next time.