I'd like to give her credit wrote:
What a shame they don't just provide all 168hrs of footage from the LiveStream available.
If Amy were to walk at 4mph for 19hrs per day she'd be covering 76 miles per day which would be 532 for the week.
Within the found video, we can see periods where she does run. If she did 3hrs at 6-7mph she could do her daily mileage in around 17hrs per day (6-7miles x 3hr=20miles, 4miles x 14hr = 56). Let's also note that treadmills are easier to run/walk on than normal exercise due to the lack of wind resistance.
If all the footage could be found and married up with Dave's running logs, I'd honestly be impressed if she managed 16-20hrs on that treadmill for seven days in a row. Hanging on the bars or otherwise. World record or not. Calibrated or not.
To me the sad thing here is that I believe there really is a lot of effort going into her stunt running. Even if her 53 marathons in 53 days is short on some of the days, what she did manage would still impress people outside of the running community and many within. People would have a lot more respect, sympathy and support if she just admitted that on some days it became too much. Eddie Izzard didn't manage his 50 in 50 but no-one cares, it was the act of trying that impressed everyone.
But instead of focusing on what she did achieve and continuing to raise funds for her charity she's got into a battle with the media, LetsRunners, ultrarunners and GWR. It's like the little kid who spends more time arguing about whether they're going to do their homework than the time it would take to actually do it. No-one's giving into them so it just becomes an unnecessarily protracted battle which leaves a bad taste.
On watching a little of the videos, of her running in a darkened shopping mall with nobody to chat to, I've become impressed with the effort she put in. She is supporting herself on the handles at times, which I presume is against the rules but those handles must be so tempting when you are dog tired. I see lots of runners leaning on those handles in gyms.
The simple math of 4 mph for 19 hours per day is where they went wrong. Laz will tell you that multi-day ultra running doesn't work like that. There is wear and tear and it's a difficult task to keep moving for that length of time. I'd say Dave did the maths and encouraged Amy that it would be no harder than sitting in a tub of baked beans as someone said earlier and that's how the challenge started. Then on the first day Amy only covered 60 miles and the math started looking shaky. There was too much invested in social media, sponsors etc to fail (think Skins and Rob Young) so the multiple quick 10k efforts happened late in the week.
