Going to great lengths Who tells us when we’ve gone far enough, and what if we could actually go a whole lot further than we think? Britt Coker meets a woman who doesn’t do things by halves. Supplied
E
mma Timmis seems likeable enough. No inkling of a driven personality, or ruthlessly competitive spirit. On paper even, she stuck to
hours when I was not in any state to do it (retunring from injury) but did it as a fundraiser and a bit of a test of myself to see how it could go. Then based
a conventional life path until her late 20s, at which
on the results from that 24-hour run, decided that I
point she ran on a very long one that traversed South
would go for the record for New Zealand at the end of
Africa. She’d liked running since aged 12. She’d
the year (which she did) and now I'm recovering.”
always liked adventure too, leaving the UK when she was 18 to go travelling. So, running and travelling. Nothing unusual there. Except she has taken them to extremes in a way most of us could only imagine. I ask her to list her achievements. “Running across South Africa (2400 km), running across Africa (3974 km) and roller skating across the Netherlands. Cycling from the UK to Italy (2200 km) and back. Walking the Australian Alpine Track
Recovering, because she ran the length of New Zealand at a blistering pace of 100 kilometres a day for 21 days. She went through five pairs of shoes as she pounded the asphalt. Her feet were swollen by the end of day two, and the pain was unbearable. Unbearable for most of us at least, but Emma bore it. Why didn’t she pack it in at that point? “I just wanted to achieve what I set out for.”
(670km), riding an elliptigo bike across Australia
Emma’s two favourites from this remarkable list
(7951km) which I have a Guinness World Record for,
are the elliptigo bike ride across Australia and her
then I ran around Hagley Park in Christchurch for 24
New Zealand run. But neither rate highly because
Emma Timmis ran for 89 days across Africa, a total of 3,974km.
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