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With a little help from my friends
What do Gas Safe Register inspectors do when they’re not at work? Registered Gas Engineer talks to James Meadows, who has undertaken an astonishing sporting feat.
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James Meadows has just completed his first 100-mile run. No, that’s not a typo. “It’s been a target of mine for a few years but it didn’t happen for one reason or another,” he told us.
The ultra-runner had a good reason for finally achieving his ambition on 1 April: he wanted to help raise awareness of and funds for a group that aims to combat knife crime. The organisation, in Memory of Colin McGinty, was set up by the family of James’s schoolfriend, who was just 21 when he died after being stabbed in what the police said was a case of mistaken identity.
Although James had lost touch with Colin, a friend spotted on social media that the organisation had set up a running group and they got in touch. As the 20th anniversary of Colin’s death approached, James
decided that the time was right to try to run for 100 miles.
Covid restrictions meant that the group had not been able to train together and wouldn’t be able to organise a race for the anniversary, so James decided to take on his challenge solo.
The start
He planned a route that started and ended at his Aintree home, on a 25-mile circuit that he would need to run four times. But when he set off at 6pm, he found that he wouldn’t be all on his own after all. For the first 25 miles, he was joined by three members of his other running club, the Marsh Lane Harriers. The second 25 miles saw kNOw Knife Crime runners join in.
And then the Merseyside Police came along too. “A couple of police officers drove beside me and had a little chat, which was nice,” says James. “Then in the early hours of the morning, one of the Colin McGinty team joined in and rode his bike next to me, and a few hours later a few more came on their bikes.” The last 10-15 miles saw half-a-dozen runners join in with James as he approached the end.
The finish
After 19.5 hours of running, at 1.30pm, James reached his home for the last time, where family, friends and police were waiting to congratulate him on his mammoth achievement. “Even though I was
running through the night, I never felt tired – I was wide awake the whole time,” he says.
But it hadn’t been all plain sailing. He describes ultra-running as being like an eating contest because you have to ensure that you take on enough food and drink to be able to continue. “But from about 25-30 miles, I felt bloated and a bit sick and I couldn’t get the calories in. From 30 miles to 75 miles, I barely took a thing in and, from 75 miles, crisps were the only thing I felt like so I took on a few bags.”
It was hardly the ideal fuel and James started to suffer from severe leg pains over the final distance. “When I got to the end, I wasn’t in the best state: I just got straight into bed,” he says.
The recovery
Recovery from such extreme exertion wasn’t immediate and it took around 10 days before James’s body eased up enough for him to return to day-to-day activities. Luckily, he had taken the week off work after the run to give himself time to recover.
Now he’s starting to get back to his usual running routines and patterns, sometimes with the Marsh Lane Harriers, and sometimes with the Colin McGinty team, but more often out on his own, putting dozens of miles at a time under his belt. Running on his own means that he can balance its demands with his work and family life that includes 11-year-old twins and a six-year-old.
Racing for the sake of it doesn’t appeal, he says. “I prefer to spend time with the kids. If you do a race, the best part of a day’s gone. The kids play footy at the weekend as well,” he says. But thoughts are starting to turn to his next challenge already. “I’ve ticked the box for 100 miles now, what’s next? In the back of my mind there’s a 24-hour race, where you cover the maximum distance you can. I don’t know though, my wife might divorce me.” n
James joined Gas Safe Register in March 2020, having been a self-employed gas engineer for 16 years. As an inspector covering Liverpool, Southport and part of Preston, he knows from his own experience the challenges that gas engineers can face in their day-to-day work, especially during the Covid pandemic, and he makes sure that he is empathetic and approachable. “I treat people the way I wanted to be treated. No one’s perfect, and people do make mistakes,” he says.
James’s run helped to raise funds for a group set up in memory of his schoolfriend. In Memory of Colin McGinty is a team of mixed-ability runners that aims to make people aware of the long-term traumatic effects of knife crime, in the hope of deterring people from carrying a knife.
“We are a team of people from all over the UK who believe in making a stand against knife crime. We bring teams of people together through positive sporting events to run in memory of Colin McGinty and use our platform to spread the kNOw Knife Crime message.”
