Jake Catterall’s record-setting this summer started with a joke his mom made at the dinner table. Having already run the 5,000 km from northern Norway to southern Spain in 2023, she lightheartedly suggested he might as well run across all the mountains in Europe. He thought it was a good idea.
Now the British runner has gone from racing 5ks in under 16 minutes to being the first person to run the 2,000 km Via Alpina red route through Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France and Monaco. Sure, he figured out the for success (it's the if you're curious) and he credits his with saving him time on navigation, but we wanted to know what the special sauce was that powered him through the 35-day adventure so we sat down to find out how he did it, and what he learned along the way. No one would be surprised if running the equivalent of Everest 12 and a half times over the course of a month brought about a few weird side effects, but Catterall says thanks to his training and preparation, there were no nasty surprises.
And that, he thinks, is down to training and preparation. “I spent the best part of nine months telling my body, ‘for 35 days you’re going to go through hell and there isn’t going to be an option to sit and rest and take a break afterward. You’re going to have to wake up at seven in the morning and get back on the horse at 8:30 a.
m. and do it all over again.’” Using a progressive overload approach to training, he started out with a moderate l.