Two Scotsmen Dr Andrew Murray and Donnie Campbell ran up and down Mount Kilimanjaro in one day on Thursday (4th July), and made the made the 5895-metre ascent in just seven hours and 16 minutes.
Dr. Andrew Murray: “This is Mount Kilimanjaro, 5895 metres, the roof of Africa, we are going to climb this in one day. The route we are going to take in the Uhuru Breach approach which is the hardest and steepest route on the mountain.”
“To be quite honest with you I don’t think I realised how difficult it is running at attitude. To run up mountains in Scotland or further afield that are a bit lower, we’ve done it in the past and stuff, but Kilimanjaro is just epic.”
“I feel as if I was going to die, you know I could hardly breath, it just felt like I was breathing through a straw. Really, really tough times, but then you looked around and you could see the plains of the Serengeti and you could see Mount Manyara and loads of other mountains all around you and that made it all better.”
“You’re never actually going to have a good time up there, you’re going to have an amazing time in terms of looking at the views and taking in the world. But there are things that are going to go wrong – I was cold, I was miserable and extremely tired. There’s a huge crater that you actually see on Mount Kilimanjaro as well and that crater resembles my right foot, I’ve got a huge blister on my right heel, which are going to make things difficult running seventeen consecutive ultra marathons for the next seventeen days.”
