Walking, cycling, anything involving actual physical effort - what's the furthest or toughest you've managed?
I'm wondering about trying to ride the 100 mile South Downs Way tomorrow; Winchester to Eastbourne, almost all trail, with 13,000ft of climb and descent. That alone is pretty stupid, and you can add to that the shit weather we're due. Oh and I've got a GPS but no actual paper maps, and the furthest I've ridden recently is 65 miles. Oh and I have to get up at 5am to do it, and if I don't make it to some form of train station by 10pm at the latest, I have to sleep in a field.
I once did do 100(.4) miles in a day but that was on the flat and partly road - Nottinghamshire.
Tell me your stories and encourage me to break myself trying!
My stupidest mission was when I was 16.
I had decided I was going to bike it from York to Edinburgh - the idea being that, since my family were in Edinburgh visiting family, I'd set out a bit later, get a train to York, then bike it from there to Auld Reekie. I was persuaded that York was probably bit of an ambitious project, so I went for Newcastle instead, and planned to do the run - a nominal 100 miles - in 2 days.
The only way to get to Newcastle cheaply was to take an overnight train, so I arrived accordingly at King's Cross on my knackered old racer, with about 23p on me, no watch, and a pannier full of home-made flapjacks. And a tent.
I arrived in Newcastle at 0630 the following morning. It was drizzling, and 8/8 cloud cover - a situation which prevailed for the entire day. I had no map, just the knowledge taht I needed to get to the A696 and follow it until I got to the A68, then head for Jedburgh, then Edinburgh. So off I went. Various adventures were had - I dozed off coasting down a long hill, and woke to bumping along the Armco, the other side of which was a precipitous drop. Worse, thanks to a slight "ding" on one of my wheel rims, and lots of braking on long descents, my front tyre was wearing out quite alarmingly, to the point where I had to stop the bike, take off the tyre and inner tube, take off some of my handlebar tape, and try to lash up the tyre a bit before reassembling the whole thing.
By the time I was approaching Jedburgh, still under the murky grey and thinking it must be getting to early evening, I'd decided I'd had enough for one day, and started looking around for somewhere to pitch the tent. As I arrived in Jedburgh, extremely tired and very hungry, the church clock chimed: two o'clock in the fucking afternoon. There was clearly no point trying to lie up that early in the day, so I decided just to plod on. Somewhere about late afternoon - 4 or 5pm - I got to the top of a hill, and saw the Forth Bridges spread out before me. "Great", I thought, "quick nip down this hill and I'm home and dry". Not much further on was a sign saying "Edinburgh 26 miles". A real sickener moment.
I knew I had to get to Corstorphine in Edinburgh, but had no map, so it was just a question of winging it. I probably went further out of my way than I needed to, but I arrived at my destination, 125 miles later, knackered, grimy and starving, at 8 that evening.
Apparently, very shortly before I knocked on the door, my (charming) sister had just announced that she expected me at any time to phone up and demand to be collected, as I'd have had some kind of strop and jumped up and down on my bicycle 50 miles away.
Nearly 30 years later, and this is still one of my defining achievements, and something I feel a great sense of pride in having done. It could have all gone horribly wrong, but it was an achievement which bucked the trend of sports teachers insisting I was fat and useless (I was neither, even if I could have been fitter!); it was one in the eye to my parents - for all the good it did - who clearly thought I'd never manage it and were dead against the whole idea; but most of all, it showed me that sometimes sheer bloody minded stupidity IS the way forward.
