Miss Nicky Lees goes up the wall

Our Head of Modern Foreign Languages, Miss Nicky Lees, will by now be a familiar name to most as we are often reporting on her latest athletic achievement. On 18 June Nicky competed in ‘The Wall’ competition , which is her longest single-day run to date – from Carlisle to Newcastle, 69 miles – completing it in 14 hours and 42 minutes to arrive as the 15th female finisher. Well done to Nicky, who entirely deserves the summer break, possibly more than any other member of the school community!

Starting at Carlisle Castle, Nicky (who often gets lost on runs and ends up running much further than required!) more or less followed the route of Hadrian's Wall both on and off-road and finished at the Millennium Bridge in Gateshead. For comparison, the last person finished in 25 hours and 20 minutes, but even finishing is still a feat, with over 60 people dropping out before the end of this terrifically hard race.

It was a stunning run, although rather more hilly than expected. Ultra runs, which this is, is a far more sociable event than a marathon or half marathon, and Nicky met some great people en route who, like her, don’t think it weird to want to run all day! There's a real sense of everyone being in it together rather than competing against each other, with everyone going through rough patches at different times.

The following weekend Nicky ran in the North Downs Run (on 26 June), which is 30km of mainly off-road muddy madness, which was tackled the day after the torrential hailstorms with a lot of uphill and not very much downhill running. Again, a truly stunning route, which Nicky topped off with another three mile run – to the station in Gravesend to catch the train home.

As Nicky has a few more long-distance adventures planned for this summer (one organised race in Spain and then some solo plans in the UK), we wish her the very best in this astonishing adventures and do urge her to remember her desire to invest in some navigation training or devices!