Having recently reactivated my ultra-marathon running account after a multiple-year lapse, I thought I'd thrust myself back onto the stage of international running awesomeness by running an epic #fkt.

SMH to those who do not know what an FKT is. LOL. But for those among us, it stands for "Fastest Known Time". The two key words being "fastest" and "known".

You usually have to pick a route that is a legit path (so me being the fastest to run from my house to the farm shop in Lower Shelton does not count, though I have filled in the forms to get funding to make it a national trail). You have to run it the fastEST, so not necessarily fast. And it has to be known, ie on Strava.

But what to choose? There are so many. The Pennine Way? The Bob Graham Round? The South West Coastal Path?

It would be more impressive if I set myself an FKT that no one had ever dared to do.

I have seen a few signs for the "Clay Way" on some trails near me. I usually steer clear, as they seem covered in this weird type of mud that gets really slippy in the wet and then dries into rock-hard lumps in the summer. It is great for making pots and pans but lousy for running.

But more people have played golf on the Moon than have completed the entirety of the Clay Way (According to Strava). So the Clay Way it was.

After some googling, I found a map trace on some "Bilbo's Tramping Bonanza" website or something similar. It's around 12 miles. Epic.

The first thing to do was to run to the start, an FKT warm-up. It was a bit warm. My Garmin told me I needed 14 hours to recover from the 2.8-mile run to the start, but there is nothing in the FKT game for people who aren't willing to push the jiffy bag of human potential, so I set out running again a mere THREE MINUTES after finishing that run.

I had James and Skye for company. We set off from Bromham Mill and immediately caught up in #brutal traffic through the small Bedfordshire village. After the Range Rover procession, we managed to get to the other side of the path, where we wondered down "Thistley Lane," which was often overrun with annoying spikey plants.

If ever you are going to try and set an FKT, don't take a dog. They seem to go into annoyingly slow mode when trying to break records. Unlike normal when they run like a bat out of hell all the time.

The first few miles were on my favourite bit of local trail, Strava says I have run this 194 times before and probably the same amount in the opposite direction. So very little chance of getting lost.

About 3 miles in there seemed to be a small detour, the path we were on used to go underneath this pylon but now goes around it. I was once running along here when there was a thunderstorm and wondered how safe I was. Apparently very safe under a pylon if lightening hits. Not near all the electric fences though.

The next bit was the part I recalled being a bit shit. I ran it a lot in the past when I used to run to Milton Keynes for work (sometimes). It was overgrown and nasty to run on, our pace slowed as we looked around for the one part of this route I had never run before and I could see why. It was shit. We turned into a field where a farmer had put up a sign saying "fuck off form here, this isn't the path" but gave no indication as to where the actual path was. Then in an overgrown bush I saw a gap and a small arrow. It was had to see and even harder to crawl into but yes there was a path on the other side of a hidden fence. And lots of brambles too.

We scraped through there and into Cranfield where the signs on the footpaths show a different route to the website I looked at. I'm not sure what the international court of FKT arbitration would have to say about us heading directly through Rectory Wood rather than past the co-op down Wood End Lane, I'll leave it for the lawyers, but we followed the path that looked nicer.

I think we picked the worst time of the year, it was a bit on the warm side but everything was overgrown. If there were not nettles and brambles there was annoying long grass and wheat. Damn nature, getting in the way. But, of course, FKTs are all about the instinctive human drive to crush nature under its rubber-coated feet. IN YOUR FACE NATURE!

Out of Cranfield and meandering alongside some of Bedfordshire's nicest woods towards the weirdly steep bridge over the A421.

The last few miles are on the John Bunyan Trail, the scene of my other FKT from a few years back.

We ambled to the end of the Clay Way, at Ridgemont train station where there are the famous "tea rooms", which I'd never been to before and was looking forward to.

Perhaps, in the planning of the FKT I should have been more prepared by checking that the tea rooms were actually open on a Sunday. They weren't. That's because the trains don't run on a Sunday either. Bugger. How are we getting home?

Later that night there was the anxiety of having uploaded the route and creating the segment that there may have been someone else running the route faster. Also no, a lady called Katherine ran it about 7 years ago, but a bit slow. IN YOUR FACE KATHERINE!!!!!

And there you go, a story of true awesomeness. I hope you will be suitably inspired to go out there and choose your own FKT (NOT THIS ONE!) and try and smash it almost as much as me (and other James, of course, barely mentioned him here!)

People often ask me* "what's next"? Well this weekend I'm taking part in a relay to raise funds for the Thames Valley Air Ambulance, who did an incredible job saving my friends life last year. If you liked reading this and are feeling generous then please leave a donation here!

*No one asked me. When people start a sentence like this, it means no one has even come remotely close to asking them anything.

Eating (sorry I mean “Fueling”) - I had fried eggs on potato waffles for breakfast

Drinking (sorry I mean “Hydration Strategy”) - I drank some water when I was thirsty.

RunningandStuff