Eddie Izzard triumphantly finishes 1,100 mile marathon around Britain in Trafalgar Square
By Liz Thomas and Jo Clements
High heels, of course, are now out of the question.
Blisters and missing toenails mean Eddie Izzard will probably be settling for slippers for the foreseeable future.
But after running 43 marathons in 51 days, he doesn’t mind a bit.
The transvestite comedian whose epic 1,105-mile journey raised £200,000 for Sport Relief has finally hung up his trainers.
He looked exhausted but in good spirits as he ran up the steps of the National Gallery in London raising his hands triumphantly in the air.
‘I feel dead,’ he declared as hundreds of wellwishers cheered his arrival.
‘Being here [with everyone ] is very nice. When I left here seven-and-a-half weeks ago there was nobody here and it was just another cold morning.
‘And now there is a lot of people here – even in the rain.
‘I think the worst part of the experience was the last three minutes sprinting down The Mall, which was really tough.
‘I don’t think what I did was amazing. Anyone can do it.’
That, however, is debatable. Izzard clocked up more than 27 miles – further than a marathon – every day, six days a week, since he set off on July 26.
The man who trained for only five weeks before his Herculean effort found things became much easier once he hit the road.
When he started, he was completing the daily distance in around ten hours. By the time he had finished he had halved his time to a little over five.
He had hoped to make the final leg from Potters Bar in Hertfordshire to central London in under the five-hour mark but missed his target by just 30 seconds.
Sports scientists put his boosted performance down to the ‘training effect’.
As the body adjusts to training it copes better with the physical demands as muscles enlarge, the heart rate adapts and lowers, and lung capacity and breathing improves.
‘It’s changed my body,’ Izzard said.
‘I’ve been stuffing food in my mouth morning, noon and night and now I have to stop
doing that.
‘I’m completely exhausted and I can’t sleep properly. The first three weeks were
the toughest, when it started raining, but I’m a relentless idiot. I’m supposed to have
an ice bath now.
‘Then I am going to have a party somewhere dry and then I am going to sleep for a week.’
Izzard travelled with his tour manager, a sports therapist and an ice-cream van, which dispensed free ice-creams to supporters as he ran.
His daily routine began at 9am with a warm up and a massage followed by a porridge breakfast before setting off around mid-morning.
He took in 5-6,000 calories a day including pasta, cakes and biscuits.
His feet and ankles took the most punishment over the 1,100-mile route from London to Cardiff, Belfast, Edinburgh and back to London. ‘I had about five or six blisters
at the top and it’s now down to two on the outer toes,’ he said.
‘They look like aliens. And I lost my toenails on my outer toes as well. I don’t think I’ve lost weight because it turns into muscle, so you probably put on weight. I’ve
probably leaned up.’
Last night John Brewer, a professor in sport at Bedfordshire University, said pounding the pavement for so long could cut Izzard down to size.
‘He might actually be a little bit shorter,’ he said.
‘Studies have shown that marathon runners tend to lose between one and two centimetres in height because the spine constricts slightly. That is a short term effect and the height will come back up again.’
More than 750,000 people followed Izzard’s Twitter updates on his journey. And quite a few came along for the run.
Izzard remembers stopping for a burger at a fast-food drive-through and a group of girls suddenly deciding to run with him. Another group of boys kept up with him for
five miles.
Anyone wishing to sponsor Izzard for his run can log on to www.comicrelief.com/donate/eddie.
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