Women runs 520 miles on treadmill in 7 days but doesn't get WR as Guinness says her witness doesn't count

Power of -10 wrote:

But this wasn't a "competition", it was a record-breaking attempt (successful) to raise money for charity.

Right, which is why it has no place at all in Power of 10. It was not a race, I am not sure how I can make this any plainer.

"Stunts of 10" is what you are looking for.

She herself credits this as the main focus.

But the naysayers who say she had no "plan" or something are wrong too. She totally prepared for it.

Increased strength work

I really upped my strength work over the past six months, concentrating especially on core and legs. This consisted of a hell of a lot of squats, lunges and every plank variation you can think of. I think sometimes runners can forget to spend time on other forms of training other than running, but it really does help strengthen the joints. I also combined this with HIIT (high-intensity interval training), using lots of power exercises like plyo lunges and burpees (the devil’s exercise).

Long runs/early mornings/late nights

Trying to fit everything in is hard, as I am sure you know. My training involved a lot of early mornings and late nights. Five times a week I got up before most people open their curtains to go and spend three hours on the road. I tried to concentrate on upping my time on the road or treadmill rather than focusing on distances to get my body used to spending so much time on my feet. I would do about three treadmill speed work sessions a week, usually at night.

Fuel

Nutrition is so important. I was starting to get a little sick of constantly eating but it was important to make sure I was fuelled efficiently for such long training runs and high mileage. There was a lot of wholemeal pasta and sweet potato included in my diet, especially over the past two months and what was a saviour on long runs were Krispy crème donuts and Percy pigs (my trusty favourite). I nearly doubled my portion sizes over the past month in preparation. I didn’t think I would struggle to eat but I found myself trying to force myself to eat and snack more in between meals because I knew my body needed it. I squeezed in protein shakes, boiled eggs and peanut butter on toast where I could.

Yoga

Yoga helped me so much both mentally and physically. When you have such a hectic work and training schedule it really does help balance both mind and body. It helped me balance out any muscle imbalances and build strength, especially in my core. The breathing technique that is also taught in yoga really helped my cardio strength and made breathing easier when running.

Overcoming my fears

I am a big believer in the saying “if your dreams don’t scare you then they aren’t big enough”. All my challenges most definitely scare the hell out of me. There were lots of fears for this challenge but I was ready to face them head-on. That distance on a treadmill for me was by far the scariest and hardest (both mentally and physically) challenge I have ever set myself.

Mentally being in the same place for the same time on the same treadmill was testing, but the support from all my followers and passers-by helped massively.

Running for up to 20 hours hours straight was one of the biggest difficulties, but I tried to train myself to break it down into chunks of time to make it more manageable in my head. I thought of it like a job, and focused on one day at a time.

Staying motivated!

My biggest passions in life are to inspire others and do what we can for The 53 Foundation (http://www.the53foundation.co.uk). Knowing that I was doing that throughout this challenge kept pushing me on. I’m now sore and have blisters on my feet – but it feels amazing to have achieved this. Having people join me, receiving messages of support and inspiration fuels my want to complete these challenges. I always feel like my challenges are more of journey that I share with my friends and followers and with their support, I had no doubts we could do this!

I can't believe that half of LRC has decided against her before hearing her side of story.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/toughgirlchallenges/04_Tough_Girl_EXTRA.mp3?dest-id=278581

Listen and learn wrote:

I can't believe that half of LRC has decided against her before hearing her side of story.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/toughgirlchallenges/04_Tough_Girl_EXTRA.mp3?dest-id=278581

All you need to know is that she claims that she ran 521 miles in 7 days.

That's impossible for somebody like her without any ultrarunning experience.

Also she hasn't provided any prove yet to anybody besides Guinness and they declined the record.

That's impossible for somebody like her without any ultrarunning experience.

She HAS ultrarunning experience. Like 53 marathons in 53 days (world record). Plus you can read her practice schedule.

Her training involved 3 hours on the road every day (5 times a week) before most people even woke up. But she is so busy with her charity work ((http://www.the53foundation.co.uk) that it was hard to fit everything in, and she had to do late nite workouts on the treadmill only 3/weekly.

53x53 = 2809 wrote:

She HAS ultrarunning experience. Like 53 marathons in 53 days (world record). Plus you can read her practice schedule.

Every few weeks on this forum, someone comes to light making just these kinds of claims. You cannot in practice find a Marathon event every day of the week so these marathons are actually training runs, not marathons.

Now I am sure the Garmin tracks for all of these exist, which would be a start.

She should have used some of that mental strength to spend a few minutes reading the rules.

53x53 = 2809 wrote:

That's impossible for somebody like her without any ultrarunning experience.

She HAS ultrarunning experience. Like 53 marathons in 53 days (world record). Plus you can read her practice schedule.

Any proof of that?

and one more thing.

A marathon is not an ultra however many you claim to have done

its entirely possible that a woman with almost zero racing history and a marathon pb of 3:50 something (training runs dont count) is actually an elite level multi day racer.

...but i doubt it.

i dont doubt that she spent 20 hours a day for 7 days on the treadmill but the distance covered is highly questionable to say the least.

perhaps it just wasnt calibrated properly, maybe they deliberately fudged the data...who knows.

Scam_Watcheroo wrote:

Slacker of slogic wrote:

Then you should ask Guinness, why they aren't putting her 521 mile 7-day performance in your database.

I won't mince words. Amy Hughes' & her boyfriend Dave's claim is fake and full of conflicts of interest with zero credibility.

Just like you Derek.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

53x53 = 2809 wrote:

That's impossible for somebody like her without any ultrarunning experience.

She HAS ultrarunning experience. Like 53 marathons in 53 days (world record). Plus you can read her practice schedule.

Any proof of that?

Has she provided GPS data for those "53 marathons"? I bet those training runs are questionable as well.

Though most marathoners could log 15-20 mile days and hike the rest. I wonder what the stats say?

We need full transparency.

Amy needs to post the data relating to the 53 marathons in 53 days. Was it recorded on a GPS sports watch?

Amy needs to show evidence that the treadmills used in the 7 day event were calibrated, that the distance covered was as stated (521 miles) and that she ran the whole distance. I haven't seen that posted any where yet. Witness statements from people with a known relationship to her do not count.

Further to this I would like to see Amy publish the breakdown on how much of the donations from the 53 marathon and 7 day treadmill event went on 'expenses' and how much was actually donated to good causes.

Without doing the above I'm afraid doubts will always follow Amy.

I have just sent the open letter below to Amy Hughes public email address. Feel free to share it on those Facebook / Twitter discussions. I think I'm being very reasonable yet to the point.

https://justpaste.it/19m7x

To: Amy Hughes

Re: Open Letter to Amy Hughes - Claim of World Record for 7 Day Treadmill Run

Hello Ms. Hughes,

It has come to my recent attention that you are claiming to have set a new world record for the most miles run on a treadmill over 7 days in your September 2016 attempt at Manchester's Trafford Centre. I have been playing close attention to your very vocal social media campaign over the past few days with regards to Guinness World Records (GWR) rejecting your claim and you and your associates trying to force them to reverse their decision.

I have noticed you have a following of supporters that are helping you to obtain a large amount of press coverage, more than I've ever seen for a past campaign of this type. I have also noticed that you and your boyfriend have been posting on the Ultrarunning Community Facebook page to solicit support and get people to sign your Change.org petition to overrule the decision of Guinness. However, I see that most of the members of the Ultrarunning Community Facebook page have posted criticism and details about why your claim is invalid instead of the support I think you were expecting.

I'm not sure if you are well versed in the history of recent running events, so please allow me to list some of the runners in just the past 2 years that have laid highly dubious claims and caused great harm to the reputation of the running community:

[1] Mark Vaz - Claimed to have broken the LeJog world record by a huge margin

[2] Robert Young - Claimed to have ran 370 marathons over 1 year & attempted a world record for the run across America until stopped

[3] Kaiha Bertollini - Claimed to have broken the fastest known time for a run across the Appalachian Trail

[4] Parvaneh Moayedi - Claimed to have ran 1001 marathons

[5] KP Kelly - Claimed to run have 100 marathons in 100 days

[6] Ben Rogers - Claimed to have ran 365 marathons over 365 days

[7] Dave Reading - Claimed to be able to break the LeJog world record to Prince Harry and many others on the back of a highly dubious history of deceit

Your claim of having broken the 7-day treadmill world record by running 520 miles has invited a large amount of scrutiny because both your current world record claim, past "53 marathons in 53 days" world record claim, a demonstrable lack of elite running experience, and numerous conflicts of interest fit into the same suspicion profile that I've seen for these other runners.

Allow me to defend Guinness World Records and to detail why other runners are embracing you with so much suspicion. I will touch on 3 key points:

----------------------------------

[1] Your characterization that Guinness changed the rules on you and that your other "evidence" should overrule is fallacious. You claimed to Guinness that your independent witnesses are your boyfriend Dave Keighley, your physiotherapist, publicist, and a friend.

Guinness World Records rejected your 7-day treadmill world record claim because you used your boyfriend to record the majority of your miles and your other witnesses are not independent at all. Guinness have stated that:

"We are not disputing that Amy ran for one week - this is absolute clear to see from her evidence. It is the recording of how far she ran which we cannot accept."

"Unfortunately, the witness recording the majority of Amy's progress was not independent of her, meaning we were unable to ratify the attempt as this is an infringement of a core policy for record validation."

"All records come with a set of rules that have to be adhered to in order for us to validate record attempts, and one of these rules is the requirement for independent witnesses to be present to act as impartial extensions of Guinness World Records where our adjudicators cannot be present."

Your statements on social media and to news sites have been highly misleading, bordering on outright lies, and harms the reputation of Guinness World Records. I commend Guinness for doing a thorough review of what you have provided to them and cannot fault them in anything they have done. I don't believe the harassment from you, your boyfriend, or your other followers are warranted against Guinness for the outstanding job they have done in this situation where you are clearly in the wrong.

[2] Your other current claim to a world record of running 53 marathons in 53 days is also highly dubious and is exactly the same type of claim made by some of the other dubious runners I listed before. You did not run in any official marathons, only unrecorded and unvalidated casual runs with your associates.

This is the same type of behavior and claim that Robert Young, KP Kelly, Ben Rogers, and Parvaneh Moayedi engaged in for some of the marathons they claimed to have ran in. Yet, we have more evidence that Robert Young actually did run some of his marathons from official race results sheets than we have that you ran your casual 53 marathons. Ben Rogers also has a wealth of Strava data for some of his casual 365 marathon runs but I don't see any evidence that you recorded your runs and shared the evidence. Some of Moayedi's 1001 marathons are listed in race results sheets but we have none from your claimed 53 marathons.

[3] I also see a major issue with the conflict of interest in you seeking fame and fortune from your stunt running and soliciting motivational speaker opportunities while at the same time claiming to be doing your treadmill world record for "charity", specifically your personal 53 Foundation "charity" that you and your boyfriend Dave have set up 3 years ago and are it's trustees and effectively it's only employees.

I am also concerned about how funds donated to your foundation are being used since you have no independently audited financial records filed with the UK Charity Commission.

If your treadmill world record was done for the purpose of raising funds and awareness for your foundation, then it has already done it's job whether you actually broke the record or not. But if the primary reason for such a immense amount of harassment of Guinness is because you are seeking fame and fortune for yourself, then you should make that clear.

----------------------------------

As you can see, there are major and valid concerns about why your claims have been viewed with so much suspicion in the running community. I am open to receiving a reply from you addressing each of the points I have stated and whether you will consider calling off your harassment of Guinness World Records.

Looking forward to your reply,

Andy Tavin / The Scam Watcheroo

Excellent work...that letter shares the thoughts of mine and I'm sure, many others in the world of running.

I think it's clear she's a self serving fraud using 'charity' as a way to make a living.

Shame the Facebook sheeple are willing to accept her claims without any actual evidence.

I note on her numerous social media accounts that she is just deflecting and focusing on haters saying bad things about body image and / or running pace.

She's yet to address on of the concerns relating the recording of the data in both the 7 day treadmill run and the 53 marathons, and the #JusticeforAmy hashtag is truly cringeworthy. There are no injustices here from GWR...the only injustice would be granting a WR to a runner without the required proof.!

Deflection wrote:

I note on her numerous social media accounts that she is just deflecting and focusing on haters saying bad things about body image and / or running pace

.

What else can Amy do? You've already pre-judged the case because she isn't a "well-known" entity, or doesn't have "good form" (whatever that is), or that she did it for charity, or for whatever reason (bad body image?). Amy already stated the facts:

"With 24 hours live footage, videos recording all the key milestones asked for, 1000s of witnesses in a public environment, an hourly log of mileage, breaks and sleep time-it's still not enough.

For some people, there's just no convincing.

I'm glad Amy is using social media like some other famous people, and fighting back against the opposition hater losers.