I’m still enjoying cycling in South Australia with the Tour de Bois. First internet access since Saturday today. The running is taking a back seat to the riding this week. I’m covering just a few kilometres each day on foot.

For those who haven’t heard, I received news on Tuesday that my run around the world has been officially ratified by the World Runners Association. That means I am now the holder of the world record for the Fastest Circumnavigation of the Earth on Foot with a time of 622 days. I’m naturally very pleased about this latest news.

Tony Mangan will be finishing his world run on Sunday. He will eventually be awarded the record for the longest world run, with a total of 50,000 km or so.

On This Day

Oct 23, 2012

Distance today = 24.25 km; Total distance = 13,565.62 km; Location = Cromwell, Connecticut – 41 36.230′ N, 72 42.034′ W; Start time = 0822, Finish time = 1635

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/236525165

It was a short run, but a big day.

I began with 10 km, before Carmel picked me up in the car and we headed to the home of ESPN executive, Jason. The next couple of hours was spent filming an interview for a documentary ESPN will be producing about the run around the world.

We then headed off for lunch at a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant – a real change of culinary style to what I’ve been accustomed to recently.

After that, I headed back to the point I stopped running at this morning to resume my journey. The ESPN crew followed me for some time, filming segments on the road.

I finished the day in the town of Cromwell, where we met Chook (Roger)and Don – owners of the car we’ve had as support vehicle since being in the US. They’ve come over to see some clients, but will also travel with me during the final week of the run in the US. Chook is even going to run with me for part of each day.

Waiting to greet me at the hotel was also local Hartford resident, Charlie. He was instrumental in the very first venture capital investment in the company I founded, Oceanlinx, back in 2001. I haven’t seen Charlie for several years, and it was great to catch up. He recently rode a Harley to the famous Sturgiss motorcycle event in South Dakota. We have obviously both become more adventurous over the past decade.

It’s back to normal length runs tomorrow, as I head to to classic old town of Essex.

Oct 23, 2013

As hinted recently, I have been wanting to test myself by running a time trial over a familiar course from the past. I did that this morning.

I chose to run one lap of Centennial Park, Sydney’s first major public park, and the most well known and used. I have run this course many times before, and it is the ideal test for me at this point in time. The walking path has a good surface, it is slightly less than 4 km in length, and is just 15 metres (50 feet) from the lowest to highest points. My all-time best is 12:57 (about 3:22 per km) for one lap, and that was nearly a quarter of century ago. I would have been pleased today to run somewhere between 16 and 17 minutes, although I was prepared for even slower.

So, what time did I run? A very pleasing 15:11 (3:57 per km). I still have a long way to go (not that I ever expect to run under 13 minutes again), but it shows I’m on track to get some of my speed back. That said, it is pretty much the pace at which I ran my best marathon, so I shouldn’t be too excited about being able to manage that speed for just 4 km.

Lots of other things happening too, but I’m not at liberty to reveal these just yet. I’ll do so at the appropriate time.