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…. including Ultra-cycling and the science of human endurance
James Henderson, travel journalist and endurance sportsman
I have always been a freelance writer. I started out writing guide books to the Caribbean – well, how would you expect a 25 year old to react when asked to travel the Caribbean islands for eight months and write a book…? “Twist my arm…”, I said. That led to six editions of the Cadogan Guide to the Caribbean and the Bahamas, as well as the AA Explorer guide and co-founding a huge Caribbean website called Definitive Caribbean. At the same time I started to write for the UK newspapers, the Financial Times, the Telegraph and magazines such as Conde Nast Traveller.
In parallel I have always written about ‘participatory’ sport and particularly about endurance. I have competed in and written about many endurance running races, such as the Trans 333 (333 kilometres non-stop in Mauritania) and the Marathon des Sables, the seven-day, self-contained running race set in the Moroccan Sahara. In fact I was the first UK writer to compete in and write the story (in the Financial Times) – and I take huge, completely unaccountable pleasure in thinking that the thousands of British runners who have entered the race are very loosely down to me. The race is a fantastic adventure.
I also competed in early ‘adventure races’, or what were once more descriptively called ‘expedition competitions’. These were multi-sport events run in teams in remote terrain, lasting about a week non-stop (on average we slept about an hour a night). I was lucky enough to compete in six Eco-Challenges in the 1990s, in which I kayaked around the Great Barrier Reef and Argentinian lakes, mountain-biked the Rockies and Appalachians, and climbed and abseiled huge rock-faces in Morocco and Borneo.
It was great to be involved with these new sports, but underlying it all was an interest in endurance. In fact the first endurance race I entered was a cycle ride, Den Store Strkeproven, or ‘Great Test of Strength’, a 540 kilometre ride between Trondheim and Oslo in Norway. I was fascinated by the idea of riding so far without stopping. I have now entered the race three times (in my 30s, 40s and 50s). In 1994 the race was seen as something on the lunatic fringe of cycling. Now, with the growth of the amateur sport, and to be fair a better understanding of the human capacity for endurance, it has been overtaken by long bike-packing races.
I first came across TE Lawrence’s journeys when a Canadian professor mentioned to me, in about 2004, that TE Lawrence’s university thesis had involved a 1000 mile walk (in 30 degree heat, on unmade roads, in remote country and at considerable personal risk – he was mugged and left for dead and on another occasion shot at) visiting castles in the Middle East in 1910. I wrote an article about this for the Financial Times, in 2010 just before the war in Syria started. As I read more, I discovered that as a youth and student he was a confirmed cyclist and had cycled for thousands of miles around England, Wales and then France, and so this project began.
I am now in my 60s and I still enter events like the ones above. I don’t expect to win, but I love being out there, driving the body hard. One of the funny things about endurance is that it can continue into advanced age. Recently I completed the Coast to Coast (250km of running, cycling and kayaking across New Zealand) and in the Cerberus heatwave of 2023, 45-SouthWest, a 4375 kilometre race fom Krakow in Poland to Tarifa at the southern tip of Spain. Long may they continue!
Follow James Henderson and his adventures @EnduranceinActionandTheory