Analysis of Andi Rivett’s 2002 John O’Groat’s to Lands End [“Jogle”] world record
By Will Cockerell, marathon runner, sportswriter and author of “50 greatest marathon races of all time”.
I travelled to Rye, East Sussex on September 27, 2018 to meet with Andi Rivett [“AR”] and attempt to get some verification for his Jogle run. Due to the eye-watering quality of the record, and length of time it’s stood, it has some real scepticism in the ultra community, although AR is unaware of this.
AR was welcoming and clearly very fond of running. However, the paradox is that for someone who holds an endurance record of such splendour, his attitude to times, racing and statistics is ambivalent. The run is a significant feat due to its iconic and challenging nature and is similar in appeal to, say, the Channel swim or the US Transcon. AR appears on websites nestled alongside Usain Bolt, Paula Radcliffe and Roger Bannister which list the greatest running feats of all time, so has his name in the sport’s folklore.
He began running as a 7 year old in West Yorkshire due to asthma, and found it released the trauma. He had a solid but not noteworthy running career in school. He knew that people he beat in cross-country would get detention, so he enjoyed the feeling that gave. This though does though give the impression he was lowly rated by teachers.
After school he went into the boat building business, where he remains today. He is 54, and was 38 for the Jogle run. Although his asthma got better after school, he was now in a very dusty business and found that going for a run would clear the lungs.
I asked AR about his best times, and although pb’s for an Ultra runner aren’t everything and can be misleading, they still tell a tale, and runners do know their pb’s. AR struggles to provide his best times with any certainty, and always has to stop and reflect, which is unusual for a runner, given the enormous effort we expend into getting them. But this is what he thinks:
1500 - 4:09
He then said he went “Sub 9 for the chase” – which I challenged him on, and he agrees he must be mistaken, but is sure he went sub 9 for the 3k. Big difference.
5k – doesn’t know
10k - 31.50
Half marathon 70.30 at the Great North run.
The marathon was “never important, never chased times” but he points to a 2:48 at Stratford.
His Power of 10, the British athletic database, denotes just two performances in his entire 36 year senior running career. By way of comparison, marathon and ultra runner Chris Finill of similar age has 261 races denoted, I have 356 (10 years younger), Jogle female record holder Mimi Anderson has 14, of which 9 are ultra runs, and Dan Lawson who recently had an attempt at the Jogle record, has 22 performances of which 14 are ultras.
AR’s two denoted performances are both in 2004 and are a 34:32 10k at Wakefield and 75:37 at Blackpool. Both solid performances for a 40 year old, but only that. They placed him 147th and 69th M40 for that year, and his 10k was the 1,173 best in the country.
He has attempted to run the 24hour track run three times, but found big trouble. He failed to finish twice, and the first attempt was 132 miles.
He set the Guinness World records for 100 miles and 24 hours on a treadmill, but doesn’t know what he ran, and they were very short-lived. He gave all three of his Guinness certificates to the White Horse pub 7 miles away in Newenden, who have taken them down, and now they can’t find them, so the distance of the treadmill run is lost.
AR did the Marathon des Sables in 1998, and says he placed 19th and 2nd Brit, although I have not seen the verification.
His original attempt at Jogle was to have been 18 months earlier, but he had shin splints, which orthotics cured.
AR’s Jogle WR:
He drove up to John O’Groats two days before he began and in the support motorhome was his physio Penny, (he doesn’t know her surname), her partner (doesn’t know name), and her family, who it turns out were a toddler and a newborn. I believe there were one or two other supporters, who would be on bikes around 50% of the time, names not supplied and perhaps not known.
To verify the run, lots of photos were taken of AR by his supporters throughout the run, and sent to Guinness, and when they passed a policeman they would ask him to sign a form saying that they’d seen Andi running by.
The run started at 6am on the first day, but midnight all the others. Initially, when asked how much he was doing a day, he said 18 hours, but I clarified to mean distance, to which he replied 90 miles. It’s very unclear what the distance was exactly and the picture denoted at the finish line says it’s 874 miles. So he’d actually need 96 miles a day.
The run took place in very good weather, except for terrible conditions for the last 1.5 days, which didn’t affect him. No injuries, but he felt awful on the 3rd day, which he expects meant that he had to run for 20 hours, not 18. He bounced back well thereafter and never slowed down on the run, or hit further trouble.
The trick he says is all psychological and to break the run down into 10k segments. Never wait till you get hungry before eating. He had physio and acupuncture in the evenings. He had one ‘injury’ when someone stepped out in front of him, he landed heavily, which triggered a blister on his instep. Both feet turned “black”, but neither that, nor the blister, affected his running.
The intention was to give himself a one-day buffer on Robert Brown’s record, on the assumption that he would slow down, but he never did.
Analysis:
I enjoyed meeting AR and liked him as a person. I want to believe that his record is genuine, but I have grave doubts. These are my 15 issues with the mark:
1) His lack of clarity or verification of his pb’s is frustrating, and to say he went sub 9 for the steeplechase, which has one in the mix in the early stages of an Olympic heat, is very odd. Serious runners know precisely what they’ve done and are so specific. Andi has to think hard about any pb and it’s usually more of a ‘stab’.
2) The 70:30 for the GNR is good [but not verified], but the 2:48 marathon is awful for a 31min 10k & 70 half man. It’s easily the worst conversion rate of half to marathon I’ve ever seen. AR says he never really went after the marathon etc. but he also says that his approach to life is to do the absolute best at anything he tries. He either hasn’t tried at the marathon distance, or really struggles at it.
3) His 132 mile best for the 24 hour track run is very poor, and with the other two attempts being dnf’s, the event has found him out. 132m is what a 3 hour marathon runner does. He would not be winning the ladies race in a small field. His distance is 57 miles off the world record, a huge amount considering he holds one of the dominant ultra-running records in history.
4) He describes women’s Jogle record holder Mimi Anderson as a ‘fabulous’ runner, but his Jogle time is 85 hours superior to hers. This is a grave anomaly when one considers he is not even winning a women’s 24 hour track race. His marathon best is only 50 minutes better than Anderson’s, and the Jogle is 32 marathons. Thus, he should be beating her by around 26-27 hours, or a little over a day. But he’s beating her by over 3.5 days.
5) The men’s world records in athletic fields tend to be 1.1 times quicker than the female equivalent. AR’s is 1.38 times superior to his female counterpart.
6) World records tend to be 0-3% superior to the next mark. AR’s is 11% better than Brown’s.
7) Aside from the Jogle, AR has displayed an aversion to racing in the public eye. Hence his name being all but absent from Google or the Power of 10. For such a dedicated and driven runner, this is almost unprecedented.
8) AR’s Jogle record does not tally with American Transcon record-holder Pete Kestelnik whatsoever. PK’s Transcon, when converted to Jogle by a pace calculator, gives him 10 days and 8 hours, and his US crossing time of 42 days in 2016 was deemed outstanding, often running at sub 10 minute miling. On the flip side, AR’s Jogle record is worth 36 days for the Transcon or 84 miles per day. 12 miles a day superior to Kestelnik’s 72.
9) It’s odd that AR is only able to provide a single name christian name, Penny, who he’s not in touch with, for his entire support staff. Her “family”, of a toddler and newborn are of course non-witnesses.
10) The verification process of getting cops to sign a sheet when he ran by them is about as weak a method as it’s possible to imagine, as are the photos he sent to Guinness, as both involve AR in action, ie running, but neglect occasions when he was not running.
11) It strikes me as very strange that he began each day’s running with a wake up call at 1145pm to start at midnight. It’s such a harsh time to start the day. Surely around 4 or 5am would be less onerous. He ran an extra 36 hours in the dark than was necessary, which is so much more boring and lonely, and also chose to run those 36 extra hours when there were no witnesses, or police to sign his forms etc. When I asked AR why the run started at midnight each day, he replied, “no idea.”
12) Kostelnik’s time for running across Iowa is 423 miles in 7 days. Rivett is covering 830-860 miles in 9. It’s a stunning differential.
13) Kostelnik has a distance of 163.6m for the 24 hour run, compared to AR’s 132.
14) AR ran nearly the same pace for his Jogle as he did for his only completed 24 hour run, which was 99 miles per 18 hours, compared to 96 for day 6 at Jogle.
15) AR says the challenge began at 6am on May 4th, but this is not noted in Guinness’s record, (which it should be). If he ran 90 miles a day and (and 96 miles on the 6th day as is claimed); the logistics of the run are over before they’ve begun. For instance, how did he manage the 90 on day one with a 6am start? It will have taken him till midnight. But that’s when day 2’s running began. The attempt has become a logistical nightmare after the very first day. It is missing 6 hours.
Summary and Proposed solution
Having studied this case closely, I do not quite see how the 9 day, 2 hour mark is possible. It may be a simple clerical error like starting on May 3 instead of May 4 etc, and actually May 4-13 is a 10 day spell anyhow, which is where the start time and finish for the race are vital, but not logged. But the above analysis tells us these facts: AR struggled badly at both the marathon and 24 hour run; his Jogle in no way tallies with the runs of Kostelnik and Anderson or his 24 hour run; his witnesses are all but unnamed; his verification via photos and police signatures are of little use; and the superiority of 11% over the next best attempt is too severe. One third of the run needlessly occuring in the dead of night is very troubling, as is every aspect about point 15.
I propose that I share these observations with Guinness and the Ultra community and that AR’s record is kept but marked as “unverified”, for the simple reason that verification methods have markedly improved since 2002, and no-one could possibly record a run like this now without going through the correct channels [Strava/garmin etc], so why should AR? Jogle now clearly needs some formal, stringent requirements to make an attempt’s verification watertight, so that mankind can attack this great challenge with surety not doubt.