I want to return to this article that Hertfordshire Insider posted. I have many questions about this, especially if the details are true. I'm not familiar with Hertfordshire or this website or this news archive "archive.is". Is this article for real? Or could it be a pseudo/fabrication, maybe by Rob back in 2004 to boost his credentials, or by a detractor this week to make Rob look like a fraud?
I've tried googling for further info on this with all kinds of terms and can't find anything even using google.co.uk and limiting the time period to 2004-08 and UK as a country.
If this article has real details, this causes problems for the backstory of Young's book in which he makes himself out to suddenly become an instant marathoner on a whim. In his book, he claims that his GF/partner baited Rob into a 20p bet by saying, "You'll never run a marathon." He claims, "I was just a 31-year-old office worker who hadn't run his first marathon yet." He also claims after he finished his first marathon on April 14, 2014, "Hurray! I had lost my [marathon] virginity. Now I just needed more practice. A lot more."
That's kind of the whole point of the book. He suddenly and instantly became a marathoner when his GF/partner thought he was lazy and he couldn't do such a thing. When he does allude to his past as a triathlete, he downplays it and never clarifies if these were sprint tris or longer-distances. Yet he was training for and racing 30K (18.6 miles) runs in these triathlons. The reader is left with the impression he was doing short triathlons because of the way he says he was not good at running and downplays himself as a long-distance runner.
But in the article linked above, Rob had finished the first of three big challenges for charity in 2004: (1) swim 12K in a pool; (2) cycle the "Three Summit Challenge" and break the WR for that time; and (3) some kind of long-distance run with the details (and distance) yet to be announced.
Cycling the Three Summits would be a major, multi-day endurance event. Those are the 3 high points of Scotland, England, and Wales. Hiking them combined is 26-27 miles with 10,000' elevation gain. And biking to connect them would involve 460+ miles of cycling. And Young hoped to break the WR for this cycling the three summits challenge. In this 2004 article, Young had not yet done this, but it was planned. If he did do this, it would be very disingenuous to imply in the book that he was not a long-distance runner.
Charity challenge #3 sounds like it would be a very long run, probably a marathon or longer, if you're doing a long-distance run for charity, especially if charity challenge #2 was 460 miles of biking and 26 miles of hiking.
Like I said, I've tried googling for info if Young ever did charity challenges #2 and #3, but I haven't found anything. Any suggestions how to find info on this?