These boots aren’t made for walking ....
Marathon competitor forced to improvise after airport loses his specialist gear for 100-mile trek
A British endurance athlete has completed a 100-mile ultra-marathon across a frozen lake in Mongolia wearing his fashion brogues after his specialist kit was misplaced by an airline. Peter Messervy-gross, 47, managed the feat in temperatures as low as –30C in jeans and street shoes after his bag was lost by the Russian airline Aeroflot. Mr Messervy-gross said he was unable to buy any sports shoes in Mongolia as he could not find anywhere that stocked size 13.
IT WOULD be tough enough completing a 100-mile ultra marathon across a frozen Mongolian lake with the proper equipment. Peter Messervy-gross performed the feat wearing jeans and his everyday fashion brogues.
Mr Messervy-gross, 47, had spent months accumulating winter weather kit for the Mongol 100 challenge and when his bag was lost by Aeroflot, rather than give up, the father-of-three decided to plough – or more likely slide – on with one of the world’s toughest challenges.
Sporting his four-year-old leather brogues and the denim jeans he wore on the flight, Mr Messervy-gross managed the remarkable feat of walking the 100 miles across Khövsgöl Nuur, known as the Blue Pearl of Mongolia, in just four days. Temperatures at night dropped to –22F (–30C).
He had tried to buy replacement running shoes in Ulan Bator, Mongolia’s capital, but discovered to his horror that nowhere stocked footwear to accommodate his size 13 feet.
“It was like the Ugly Sisters trying on Cinderella’s glass slipper,” he told The
Daily Telegraph. “I couldn’t squeeze my feet into the running shoe. It wouldn’t fit and they just don’t stock anything bigger than a size 11. When my airport bag still didn’t show up, the penny dropped that I would have to do the race in the brogues.”
He borrowed thermal underpants, a balaclava, food and mini-crampons from his fellow competitors – “I was a walking charity shop” he admitted – before setting out in his £70 shoes, bought from Joules.
“I honestly thought I will only make it to the first checkpoint at 10km and that will be me done. But after that I just kept hobbling along,” he said.
Mr Messervy-gross along with four other competitors in the race, organised by the UK firm Rat Race Adventure Sports, had lost their luggage in Moscow airport as they transferred flights to Ulan Bator.
The other four got theirs back before the race start; Mr Messervy-gross, who lives in Jersey with his wife and family, was not so fortunate.
Fellow competitors dubbed him “the rogue in brogues”. Most of them wore specialist high-end winter walking boots or shoes while eight completed the course wearing ice skates. One cycled across the lake.
The effort took its toll and Mr Messervy-gross, a chief information officer with a tech company, suffered painful blisters, although no more serious effects.
“When you run a race like that your feet swell because you’re on them for so long – I literally became too big for my boots,” he explained, “It did get pretty uncomfortable, my feet blistered really badly and especially on my little toes, which was quite painful.”
He added: “My shoes held up surprisingly well – I’m just a bit allergic to putting the things on now.”
Perhaps inevitably, Mr Messervy- Gross, whose wife Melissa is a champion triathlete, got his holdall back on the last day of his Mongolian adventure. “We were at the airport after finishing the event – and my luggage turned up 15 minutes before check-in for our return home,” he said.
“I never found out what happened to my bag, but after I told my family what happened they were all so proud of me for carrying on. I’m so glad I stuck it out.” He explained that the trek had become a different challenge once he undertook it in his brogues.
“It changed from being a foot race from A to B and turned into a whole different adventure about a group of people helping me out even though they were suffering too,” he said.
Jim Mee, Rat Race founder and organiser of the Mongol 100, part of its Bucket List series, was impressed by Mr Messervy-gross’s perseverance.
“He did this with pure gusto,” he said, calling the race “the most surreal, audacious and hauntingly beautiful adventure challenge known to man”. And that was before anybody attempted it in brogues.
‘Your feet swell because you’re on them for so long – I literally became too big for my boots’