To Russia with love

Bob Brown, one of the UK’s greatest athletes is at it again. Not content with running across Australia, America and Europe, he now plans to tackle an incredible 8,850 km by running across Russia. Why are you doing that, asked Flipside…

Bob Brown, the UK’s toughest endurance athlete is calmly planning to run across Russia next year. It’s the 4th step in his bid to run around the whole world. The final stage will be in 2010, beginning in Japan and ending in Australia where he first began this extreme quest in 2001.

Bob’s 8,850km (5,500miles) run across Russia will begin next April after the worst of the weather has passed. At the moment, in between his primary school teaching in Cornwall, he’s busily planning the run which includes raising £70,000 through sponsorship, planning routes, getting visas and sorting what they are going to eat food and where we are going to stay. ‘50 % of the run happens before I’ve even taken a step, it’s the hardest part’, say Bob. ‘Running 88km (55 miles) a day is easy compared to raising sponsorship.’

Yep you read it right, 88km a day, no days off and a hope of crossing the massive land mass in under 100 days.

Bob has a tight knit back up team, just four people including his girlfriend who is going to cycle the distance as well. Perhaps oddly there’s no medic included. ‘I’m very low maintenance; I’ve never even suffered from a blister on my trans-continental runs. I just take a very basic first aid kit.’

Bob’s high level of fitness – he runs about 120km every week, means that he doesn’t need to do very much training before these huge runs but the first two weeks are crucial and the trickiest.

‘I have to go quite slowly and ease my body into the rhythm,’ say Bob. ‘After the first day, you think your legs can get any more painful, then you do another day and you think, that’s it and so it goes on. Butt at some stage during the first two weeks the aches, pains and stiffness from the pounding begins to gradually ease off and your body gets used, to it so it becomes quite easy to run 88km each day.’ After that it becomes a mental rather than physical problem.’

That mental problem is the boredom factor from running for 10hours non-stop. But Bob prefers to do the distance in one stretch, finding that it gives him more time to relax at the end of the day as well as reducing the risk of stiffening up.

His running day normally starts at 6am so that he can finish around 4pm. But like many of us, getting out of bed can be a problem ‘I have to be strict otherwise I won’t be able to get the distances done,’ he says. On his last run across Europe one day he decided he would have a real treat – a lie in until 9am!

Diet is not what you would expect; in fact it’s the exact opposite of Bob’s normal day-to-day healthy food. ‘On a long run you need lots of fat, because the body is using up huge amounts. Your body craves anything that’s unhealthy for you. Normally I eat lots of fruit but on a run I can’t face it. Instead its crisps lots of chips and even with this I still loose about 12 kg during a run. I’m burning around 12000 calories a day but I can only take in about 8000. Once I’ve finished the run, I’ll put the 12kg back on, usually in just a week.’

To counter the boredom Bob runs with music on an MP3 player packed with music but even then he gets tired of hearing the same songs. For Russia he is going to take some talking books on his player. The music and books serve more of a purpose than just entertainment. ’I can run out of things to think about and start getting bored. When that happens, it’s easy to start thinking negatively. Start thinking, “I’ve had enough of this” or “I’m going to quit” and it can ruin a run. You have to stay positive.’

At 39 Bob doesn’t find the endurance running hard but the recovery time is getting longer. Even a modest half marathon will leave him aching for a few days after whereas earlier in his 20 year running career, he would be fine within a day. Plus age isn’t slowing him down; he’s just done his personal best for the ‘fairly short race’, a full 26 miles 385 yards marathon. Clearly there’s a lot more miles in him yet as Russia will soon find.
For more details of his planned run and sponsorship, visit Bob’s site at http://www.bobbysrun.co.uk