Damian Hall Breaks a 30-Year-Old Coast to Coast Record

Vegan ultrarunner Damian Hall has broken the 30-year-old record for Wainwright's Coast to Coast, running the 185-mile route across northern England in 39 hours 18 minutes 40 seconds. He reached Robin Hood's Bay this evening (Wednesday, May 26), 18 minutes inside Mike Hartley's 1991 mark of 39:36:52.

The 45-year-old set off from St. Bees Head at 6am on Tuesday and crossed the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors, about 28,000ft of climbing in all. At one point he was more than two hours up on his schedule, but tiredness, tough weather and boggy ground pulled the margin back to a nail-biting finish.

Hall was full of praise for the man whose record he took:

Mike's record was so brilliantly fast that I had to give it absolutely everything I had - and then some more - to beat it. That meant me running faster than I would normally do for such a long distance.

Hartley came out to cheer him on at Shap. Hall also admitted the last hours were rough: "I had some wobbles in the last few hours and my fuelling went awry. Tendonitis in my calf didn't help either and by the end I was shuffling my way towards the sea."

The fuel was plant-based from start to finish. Hall, a running coach and journalist from Wiltshire, eats vegan for climate reasons and tried to make the attempt carbon negative, using local support runners and offsetting his crew's travel. Before setting off he promised to "pick up litter as I go and fuel without animal products (which is easy and fun)", and his team filled a bin bag with rubbish along the way. Great Vegan Athletes has the full story of how he eats.

It's a big week for British ultrarunning. Last summer Hall smashed the Pennine Way record, which John Kelly took back from him only last week. Vegan runners keep piling up the miles: Catra Corbett set the fastest known time on the John Muir Trail at 53, and Robbie Balenger ran 3,175 miles across America on plants.

Coast to coast, completely powered by plants.