Listen: ActiveCast with Mark Prevel
On Saturday, the 10th of June, Mark Prevel will join others taking part in the Saffery Rotary Round Island Walk with his own personal goal, walking the route twice for 24 hours.
ActiveGsy met Mark at a windy Bordeaux. With the organisers keen to attract people of all fitness levels and abilities, this is the start point for a shorter walk on the route, but one that could just be the stepping stone that we all need.
‘I’ve got Crohn’s disease, I had an onset of osteoporosis. I’ve only got part of my lungs because I had chronic emphysema at the age of 31 and they were worked on. But you can actually get over that, you can actually get further, you can actually make more of what you’ve got, once you’ve got over the psychological side.’
From lying in a Papworth Hospital bed in 1996 to taking on ultra challenges in his 60s, Mark’s journey has been transformative.
He is the embodiment of the saying it’s never too late to start and now jokes that it’s getting harder to find anyone to walk with: ‘I wear them out’.
A book given to him by one of his daughters for his 58th birthday, How Not to Die by Michael Mcgregor, combined with getting deeper into healthy nutrition – concentrating on eating natural foods – ultimately led him to thinking of his first major challenge.
‘My lung capacity is that of an 85 year old, but my body isn’t an 85 year old, I can use what I’ve got to get around and do what I want to do.’
That turned out to be two lengths of the cliffs in 11 hours.
‘I was amazed.’
But it was just the beginning.
His son was running the 2020 Guernsey Marathon which had been delayed until October because of Covid.
‘As he ran past me, I was there at Salerie, the 25 mile mark, I said to him, “if you finish in such and such a time, the next one I’ll run with you”. So he just looked at me and laughed, “yeah, right!”’.
Mark jumped into his ‘wagon’ to drive home.
‘I’m thinking to myself, Papworth Hospital, 25 or 26 years ago, put me right, because I shouldn’t be sitting here today, I thought, “it’s time to pay them back”.’
That was the spark for the fundraising side of the challenges, an idea growing and evolving.
Mark told his son that he’d run two marathons in 24 hours.
‘He said, “Dad, you’ve never run a marathon, trust me, on the hard surface, it’s pushing your luck, I can’t imagine you even running 100 yards”.’
Casting aside the sensible advice to start by run/walking, he went out and ran a straight five miles, some of the natural family talent coming through.
Six weeks later, on 22 February, he ran the cliffs in four hours and 10 minutes.
Five days after that, with the help of someone to set the pace, he ran the Butterfield Half marathon route in two hours and 10 minutes.
His heartbeat averaged a pretty extraordinary 193 beats per minute. It peaked at 220.
But Mark knows his body and what is usual.
A second half, this time in the race, followed in September 2021, finishing in two hours 20 minutes, sprinting down the Crown pier towards the finishing line.
He was, though, carrying a hidden injury.
Three days later Mark was at the doctor, checking out some back problems he’d suffered from since February but couldn’t get help with because of lockdown.
An MRI followed and a return to the surgery.
‘She said, “did you have any discomfort in the upper part of your neck? I said, “no, no, not really.”
It was then he was told he had three fractured vertebrae.
At the appointment he couldn’t think of any reason why, but later at home talking to his wife things clicked.
In the summer, descending Pleinmont Hill he’d touched his brakes on a sharp bend, fallen and caught the wall.
At the time he felt it was nothing more than a few cuts and bruises.
‘It must have been the whiplash that just fractured those bones.’
Mark is a firm believer in the ability of the body to repair and get stronger with activity.
His bone density has got back to near normal levels, something he attributes to all the work on the roads.
‘There was this fallacy where people used to turn around and say if you run on the road it fractures bones, it does all sorts. It doesn’t, it does the opposite. It builds, it makes it all a lot stronger. That’s where I get a lot from, I think it’s because you’re putting in so many miles.’
In September Mark embarked on a 150-mile cliff challenge, walking two lengths of the 15-mile stretch between the Octopus Restaurant and the Imperial Hotel each day for a week.
It provided a classic moment in his life.
On the last day he had climbed the 232 steps at Jerbourg, passing a man on the way.
At the top Mark paused for something to eat, allowing time for him to catch up.
Mark had done media interviews talking about his lung capacity being that of an 85 year old.
The gentleman he had passed had seen them, and was, it turned out, 85.
‘The best part about all this, he said, “it takes me 20 minutes to get down there and 25 minutes to get back up, but I do it daily, and that’s why an 85 year old still can do what you can do”. So I said, ”that’s the same as myself”. It’s because you can get up, you can get going every single day.’
As the challenge wore on, his body adapted. By the time he was 130 miles in and walking to the start of his last leg, there were no aches or pains.
‘No fatigue in my muscles at all. It really showed me that your body will adapt to whatever you push it to do.’
His motivation is strong, his only concession to the weather, for example, is to leave the dog at home so he doesn’t get wet.
‘I think partly what it is, you know what you’re gaining at the end of it.’
He believes he is fitter now than before he was taken ill.
‘It’s a no-brainer. Okay, all different people are built differently, but at the end of the day, I don’t care what anybody says, we’ve all got that ability where we can actually, get on and do it.’
Given Mark’s condition, his small lung capacity and heart working harder, the challenges he takes on require balance.
‘My goals are pushing myself to a limit.’
As he does that, he is also finding the limits of his family’s walking abilities too.
‘The trouble is everybody that comes with me, I wear them out.’
For more visit Mark’s website: www.papaprev.org
