\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he first fortnight was tough \u2013 terrible blisters, a flare of gout that needed a visit to A&E and the rapid realisation that running 200 marathons in 200 days around the coast of Great Britain would not be a walk in the park.<\/p>\n But Steve James, a 65-year-old retired banker from Devon, has found his feet, and on Thursday reached the halfway mark \u2013 an average of 100 marathons in 100 days.<\/p>\n \u201cIn those first two weeks I was thinking: \u2018What have I done?\u2019\u201d James said. \u201cI\u2019ve been running for 50 years and never get blisters \u2013 but I had horrendous ones for the first 10 days. My feet felt like they had been put in a vice and squeezed. The gout was a bit of curveball but the hospital prescribed some stuff and it went away. Now I feel fine.\u201d<\/p>\n James\u2019s progress along the coastlines of England, Wales and Scotland is being tracked by experts from the University of Exeter, who are keen to find out the effects of such an extreme challenge on an older person.<\/p>\n <\/span>James being monitored by researchers at the University of Exeter. <\/span> Photograph: Steve James\/University of Exeter\/PA<\/p>\n He set off from Topsham, on the south coast of Devon, in April and headed to Kent in south-east England. He then ran north to John o\u2019Groats in north-east Scotland and is on the Scottish west coast steadily working his way south.<\/p>\n There is no set route. He has a plan but adapts and changes it. \u201cIf you\u2019re in Devon and Cornwall and Wales, there is a clearly defined coast path. In Scotland there\u2019s virtually no coast path, so you\u2019re carving out your own routes. I\u2019ve been on the Isle of Mull, which was never in the original itinerary, but I hopped on and off and it worked.\u201d<\/p>\n The challenge is to do, on average, a marathon every day. Some days, depending on where the accommodation is, it might be a bit less; others a bit more, and he is not trying to clock good marathon times.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I can keep going,\u2019 says James, who is not following the type of diet an elite athlete might adopt.<\/span> Photograph: Steve James\/Exeter University\/PA<\/p>\n \u201cI am not flat out every day. There\u2019s a lot of walking involved, a bit of jogging, a bit of running \u2013 a real mix. And I\u2019m stopping a couple of times each day just to sort of rest up, if you like, have a coffee, a cake or whatever, and then get going again.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all about routine,\u201d said James, who is from Devon and trained for his challenge on Dartmoor. \u201cIt\u2019s all about getting up at the same time, leaving at the same time; it\u2019s a bit like going to work. I love the physical challenge, the idea of stretching myself physically. I\u2019m not especially talented at things \u2013 you wouldn\u2019t want to play golf with me, you wouldn\u2019t want me on your football team. But I can keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n He is not following the sort of diet an elite athlete might adopt. When the Guardian spoke to him, James had eaten cereal, a bacon baguette, cake and was planning fish and chips for dinner, washed down with a couple of pints.<\/p>\n <\/span>James is raising money for Cancer Research UK and the Scouts.<\/span> Photograph: Steve James<\/p>\n The Exeter researchers assessed James before his departure and he sends data daily for them to analyse. They are studying his calorie intake, oxygen levels and muscle measurements to examine the effect of the challenge. He has lost about 10kg but the team has seen no ill-effects to his health.<\/p>\n Freyja Haigh, a nutritional physiology researcher at the University of Exeter, said: \u201cSteve gives us a real insight into how this type of endurance impacts the body of an older person. We\u2019re unsure at the moment if Steve\u2019s weight loss is from fat or muscle mass.\u201d<\/p>\n James, who is raising money for Cancer Research UK and the Scouts, passes the time by listening to music and is also learning Cymraeg \u2013 Welsh. By the time he gets to Wales, he hopes to be able to order a pint in the language.<\/p>\n He thinks the most difficult stretch physically will be the north coasts of Devon and Cornwall. \u201cI\u2019m kind of hoping by then my body\u2019s completely acclimatised and I\u2019ll be able to cope with that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first fortnight was tough \u2013 terrible blisters, a flare of gout that needed a visit to A&E and the rapid realisation that running 200 marathons in 200 days around the coast of Great Britain would not be a walk in the park. But Steve James, a 65-year-old retired banker from Devon, has found his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[5620,5619,5617,546,5616,5622,5621,5618,2642,2443],"class_list":{"0":"post-12062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-attempts","9":"tag-banker","10":"tag-blisters","11":"tag-days","12":"tag-horrendous","13":"tag-marathon","14":"tag-marathons","15":"tag-retired","16":"tag-run","17":"tag-running"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}