By Philip Ellis
Former triathlon athlete Mark Threlfall has been throwing himself into some pretty grueling ultra-running challenges this year over on the Global Triathlon Network channel, including running a half-marathon every single day for a week. (Spoiler alert: It was “quite a tough one.”) In his most recent video, Threlfall decides to try an infamously tough runner’s ordeal, the David Goggins Challenge, while raising money for the Challenged Athletes Foundation.
Coined by the former Navy SEAL who goes notoriously hard in all of his workouts, the David Goggins Challenge (also known as the 4x4x48) involves running four miles every four hours for two straight days, at the end of which participants will have covered 48 miles in 48 hours.
“Obviously I’m covering a heck of a distance here, and it is far, but that’s not the bit that’s worrying me the most,” says Threlfall. “It’s actually the recovery and sleep deprivation.” He calculates that each 4-mile run will take him around 40 minutes, leaving just over three hours in between each round. “I feel like that is going to catch up and bite me in the backside later on,” he adds.
His prediction soon proves accurate, and the lack of sleep contributes to his feelings of fatigue before each new run, although he tries to counteract that by having people join him for most of the 4-mile jaunts—in the daylight hours, at least.
“One of the minor things about this that you wouldn’t think about that actually makes it hard is not just the lack of recovery and sleep, it’s also the fueling,” he says. “Obviously I’m hungry, but trying to get fuel in that’s not too heavy and affects the next run in two hours’ time… I’ve been struggling with that a bit. I’ve been having protein shakes, protein bars quite a lot, just to get the calories in and try to recover as best as possible.”
“David Goggins, you are a mean man,” he adds, after finishing his final run. “I knew it was going to be tough, but it’s tougher in so many ways I wasn’t expecting.”
This article was first published on Men’s Health US.
