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| Lee-Stuart Evans at the Woodbridge Cafe in Guildford doing the mega breakfast challenge as part of the 10000 calorie challenge . |
Can someone consume 10,000 calories in 24hrs and then the next day burn the same 10,000 calories in 24hrs? In this blog I take on an awesome eating/running challenge set by the presenters of The Bad Boy Running Podcast and see if its possible to have a calorie neutral weekend. I also take on the Woodbridge Cafe Mega Breakfast challenge and manage to convince my neighbours I’ve lost my mind.
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| 4000 calories in and 30 mins down and Lee-Stuart Evans is beaten by the Woodbridge Cafe Mega Breakfast Challenge |
It started with a challenge set down in this episode of The Bad Boy Running Podcast ……..
During a discussion about new challenges for Colin McCourt it was suggested that my unique ability to eat a lot of food AND run far might make me a perfect candidate for the 10,000 calorie challenge. Without knowing anything about it I accepted and then found this article on mens health about someone who failed it recently.
What struck me about the article was just how wrong it was on every level. The article concluded that its impossible to outrun a bad diet….something I disagree with strongly as someone that used to weigh more than 14 stone and lost over 3 stone by running ….and NOT adapting my diet in any way, I was proof that this line of thinking was wrong. If I ate more I simply ran more and I lost weight without changing my diet. I continue to eat what I like these days and have stayed at around 11 stone for the last 5 years.
In the article Steve Cook made a number of blunders, including starting at 7am ( and therefore wasting 7 hours of the day, he only did a small aerobic session just after midnight ) and also doing heavy weights in the afternoon which is not heavily aerobic and therefore unlikely to burn many calories. It often surprises me just how unfit people are that have gym perfect bodies. His 16 stone bulk went against him and his knees and joints paid a heavy price . He was defeated at about 7600 calories at 10.40pm. A seriously impressive achievement given the challenge, and yet one I still felt confident I could smash.
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| Mens Health Article 10000 Calorie Challenge Steve Cook |
The 10,000 calorie challenge is actually perfect for a long distance ultra runner. We have the skills to run through the night, deal with sleep deprivation, eat large amounts of food even when we don’t want to and run on a full stomach. We also know how to pace ourselves for long term goals and not sprint out hard early and blow up later. The slower you go out earlier on in a long race the better you tend to do later on in the day.
I bought a new Garmin watch for the challenge with the longest possible running battery within my budget. I used the trade in trade up scheme with Garmin to trade in my old Garmin forerunner 225 which had a worn out battery for a new watch with a 25% discount.
A week after being set the challenge I started on the Friday morning at 7.30am at the Woodbridge Cafe In Guildford for their Mega Breakfast Challenge. It’s world famous and has only been completed by 9 people. You can find out more here
You have 30 mins to eat the entire plate of food which we estimated was at least 6000 calories. I did terribly badly and was defeated after 30 mins with a huge pain in my stomach and massive amounts of nausea. I’d eaten about 4000 calories in 30 mins, I was 40% through my eating target for the day….and felt awful. I’d worn skinny jeans too, so left the cafe in disgrace with my top button and flies undone. The drive to work was awful and every bump in the road felt like an alien was about to burst out of my chest.
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| Lee-Stuart Evans fails the Woodbridge Cafe Mega Breakfast Challenge as part of the 10000 calorie challenge. |
I logged the food I ate all day using the app MYfitnesspal. For lunch I had to munch through seven 120g Cadbury chocolate at about 550 cals each. Every hour was a battle between nausea and eating more.
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| 10000 Calorie Challenge – Lee-Stuart Evans eating 10000 calories in a day logged with Myfitnesspal |
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| 10000 calorie challenge – 3500 calorie snack of Cadburys Dairy Milk |
By Friday evening I was basically there, a normal meal (which amazingly I felt hungry for when I smelt the chorizo!) and two more chocolate bars and I’d gone over the 10,000 calorie mark. I had a rest and stayed awake as my plan was to start running at 12.01am, the moment Saturday started.
I set off at midnight plus 1 minute. My plan was simple, overenthusiastic and utterly stupid in retrospect. I planned to ‘simply’ run down the Downs Link from Alfold on the Surrey Sussex border to Brighton. It is a flat trail former railway line that runs for about 35 miles and my calculations said it would be enough to hit my calorie requirements by running to Brighton and then running back. This is something I’ve done before under slightly easier conditions.
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| Lee-Stuart Evans setting off at 12.01 am of the 10000 calorie challenge |
Ten miles in and I’d got to Christ’s Hospital near Horsham and things were not going well. Firstly my rucksack had about 6 kgs of gear in it to see me through 24hrs out on my feet. The pack weighed me down and slowed me down BUT….and this was the first of many ‘calorie running’ skills , I was not being credited for the extra weight by my Garmin watch. Worse still the bag slowed me down so instead of doing my intended 650 cals per hour I was doing 500 cals per hour. It was also very very cold, I’d estimate well below zero and my Ultimate Direction fastpak 25 had got frost and ice forming on it. The Vollebak Midlayer did a superb job at keeping my core warm but my hands and face were getting a beating. If I stayed at the current plan I was probably going to fail
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| The Downs Link by night – pic by Lee-Stuart Evans |
I formed a new plan in my head . I would turn round and run back home another 10 miles with the pack on and then when I got home dump the bag and run without it to make my effort easier to burn the calories. I also needed to switch to tarmac and the flat, anything to make my life easier and gain me some calorie burning for less actual effort after squandering the first 20 miles.
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| Lee-Stuart Evans in Alpkit 0Hero Jacket during the 10000 calorie challenge |
Long distance running can do superb short term impairment of your brain. I actually call it RSS or Run Stupid Syndrome. I believe that for every 10 miles I run I lose 10 IQ points. That night was to be no exception. My first clanger of the challenge was comedy gold. My addled brain knew I would plan to do regular out and backs from my house. I knew I wouldn’t want to wake up the neighbours etc coming and going so my plan was to move my car straight over the road and leave my bag and gear in it in the empty pub car park. That way I could come and go as I please through the early hours and not worry about waking people up. So off I started in the car, covered in ice, drove it off the drive and before I realised had already driven down the road toward work on full auto pilot. Annoyed at myself for wasting time I turned round and went to the car park, before realising something very significant about the new Garmin 735XT watch. …..it hadn’t registered any calories as I sat in the car ….in fact it hadn’t even registered the miles as run. It knew with no cadence data I wasn’t running so stopped adding miles or calories. In recent years people like Rob Young have been exposed as running cheats for trying to ‘fudge’ running watch data, and it looks like the next generation of watches are far more savvy and harder to ‘trick’
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| Lee-Stuart Evans during the 10000 Calorie Challenge in Alpkit Balance Jacket |
So the out and backs started …..and kept going. Some freezing cold walking got done from 5am until 8am. Up and down the main road through Alfold , up to the Dunsfold Aerodrome ( where Top Gear is filmed ) and back again. and again …and again …and again. around 6am just before dawn and having now been awake for 24 hours since the Breakfast Challenge I was at a serious mental low. I wasn’t convinced I could do it and thought a lot about quitting.
From experience of other long Ultra races such as the Centurion Autumn 100 ( blog here http://airlandandsea.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/short-handle-small-spoon-being-called.html ) I knew that the early hours are when the demons are the loudest in your head. It was likely that they would pass with the sun rising. As dawn broke over West Sussex I did indeed feel much better, more optimistic and re-energised. I went back to my house at about 7.30 am to recharge my Garmin watch and stop the first 8 hour segment, I’d done 28 miles and about 3300 calories. I was a third of the way through, very sleepy and fell asleep for exactly 20 mins before my alarm went off and with a recharged watch started the next third. It was disheartening to see my 3300 cals reset back to zero for this next leg.
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| Garmin 735XT being used as part of the 10000 calorie challenge – pic by Lee-Stuart Evans |
As the sun came up things warmed up above zero …and then the rain came … for the rest of the day and the evening to follow. I changed out of my Alpkit 0Hero jacket and into full Alpkit Balance Waterproofs and Trousers and picked a new ‘out and back’ leg to do up Pigbush Lane and out into the fields near Alfold up on a ridge.
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| Lee-Stuart Evans doing 2 hours of stair climbing to try and burn calories out of the rain for the 10000 calorie challenge |
I did this for …a very long time. Eventually around 4pm I needed to come into the house to recharge the watch again and stop it to lock in the data for the second of the three legs. I was now about 50 miles done and 6700 calories burnt , by my maths I was a few hundred calories behind schedule and I was also very very wet. I ran up the stairs in my house, changed some gear over and went to the toilet. As I looked at my watch I was puzzled to see the cals had jumped up by 12 since running in through the door. I’d burned more cals in a few seconds than I normally do in 90 seconds walking. My fuddled brain tried to understand what was happening and then I realised …like a calorie Eureka moment !
RUNNING UP THE STAIRS WAS HARD WORK AND HAD BURNED LOADS OF CALORIES.
I was a genius. I tested my hypothesis. I went up and down the stairs, then again and again. I gained 30 cals on my counter . I WAS MOTORING ALONG. All this time in front of me was a solution to burning calories , out of the wind and rain , in the dry ! My own stairs! My heartrate up nice and high and the cals burning away.
I added another few hundred calories going up and down the stairs about 3 times per minute. My heart rate soared to 145 and the calories on the watch went flying up. I stopped after I’d gained another 300 cals and used the time to get another 20 mins of sleep before my final third.I passed out for a deep sleep for 20 mins while the watch was on recharge.
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| Garmin 735XT being used as part of the 10000 calorie challenge |
I woke up around 4.30 pm and knew I had 3214 calories to do. I wrote the final target on my hand as reminder. I had done the maths again and this meant an average of at least 420 or more cals per hour to be done before midnight, and I was currently averaging that when power walking. The problem was my sleep had pushed me about 200 cals behind schedule. I had some serious catching up to do and had to switch to an alternating run walk for 15 min out and back on my lane again. Basically from about 8am until midnight on Saturday ….in the rain ….my neighbours watched from their windows as I went up and down the lane …..many many times.
I had to push hard to catch up with the target. It wasn’t easy. Most runners are used to running to a speed or heartrate. You’ll hear people talk about running 10 min miles etc etc. Although the Garmin watch I had was customisable it didn’t show you current calories per hour as a function. No watch does that. This meant in order to gauge my progress I would have to note down my calories used over a set time, usually 30 mins or an hour to be accurate, and then with my tired fuggled brain do simple maths (which felt impossible) to work our my calories per hour. This was always bouncing between about 420 cals per hour (I was screwed and wouldn’t do it in time) to 480 cals per hour (I was a legend and would do it with time to spare). At 10pm my friend Kieran came to pace me for the last 2 hours. By 10pm I was slightly ‘wobbly’ from being tired, a bit like being drunk and from memory I wasn’t making much sense. He found the whole thing hugely amusing and forced Red Bull down me and kept me company and told me I was an idiot.
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| 10000 calorie challenge , third leg , mundane running up and down Pigbush Lane for 8 hours. Lee-Stuart Evans |
With less than 30 mins to go my Garmin watch flashed up the ‘LOW BATTERY’ sign. This was a disaster. I was terrified Id lose all the data from this last leg or worse still not log the last few calories needed. My old Garmin 225 could not be charged while it was recording and I assumed this was the case with the 735XT. With nothing to lose I tried plugging the charger in anyway whilst holding a charger pack in my hand…..and incredibly it kept recording AND charging! This is a superb change to the old watches from Garmin and makes things much easier for people that run Ultra distances and multi day races. Unfortunately the charging cable is very short and comes out of the watch on the right hand side. Had Garmin made a longer charging cable and sent it out from the left it could run the cable up your arm to a charger pack and be much easier for charging on the go when on long races whilst still leaving on your wrist.
And then it was basically over…..24 hours after I started in the same place …and the same body weight.
I pressed stop on the watch a few calories past the target with less than a minute to spare. I was too tired to be elated but I did have a huge sense of achievement. No finish line, no-one clapping, no medal, no photos. A simple well done handshake with Kieran and the joy of realising the pub over the road was still open. We went for a very quick drink in a little bit of shock. Then I went home to bed.
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| 10000 calorie challenge completed ! celebrating in the Sir Roger Tichbourne pub Lee-Stuart Evans and Kieran Faul |
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| Garmin Connect for Lee-Stuart Evans showing the 10000 calorie challenge |
I set out to disprove an article and win a bet. With the support of friends on facebook we also raised over £500 for a mental health charity in Hackney. You can find out more about the great work they do here
I won the bet, and disproved an article, I was disorganised, didn’t plan well enough, made huge errors and made the whole thing harder than it had to be, but I remained flexible with my plan and I kept my eye on the target and didn’t give up.
I learnt whole new things about my body and what we are all capable of, I must be the only runner to know he burns 10 cals per minute when running.
I had 40 mins sleep in 36 hours and ran in some of the wettest weather I’ve ever been in. I did a really stupid thing for really stupid reasons.
I came to begrudingly like the Garmin 735XT and loved the new Vollebak Midlayer which I wore for 24hrs in total comfort despite the cold and wet. The Vollebak Midlayer pairs perfectly with the Vollebak baselayer and will now be my winter go to gear for my upper body. You can find out more here.
The 10000 calorie challenge has some important lessons about diet and exercise, common sense and fitness. It is as stupid as it is epic. I shouldn’t have done it. My advice would be to anyone else to not try. It’s pointless.
…….but I’m still glad I did .
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| Garmin 735XT showing Lee-Stuart Evans 10020 calorie challenge record |
more details on the Garmin 735XT here
https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/p/541225
hos is the result of this challenge?