'We got the A-team out that day': How Michael Broadwith crushed the End-to-End record

Michael Broadwith tells James Shrubsall how his towering End-to-End record success was built on support from family, friends and even Gethin Butler, the man whose time he obliterated - Photos by Daniel Gould

On the eve of his now feted Land’s End to John o’ Groats record attempt, Michael Broadwith sat on the seafront at Sennen Cove, Cornwall, and stared through a beautiful June evening at the horizon. Cradling his eight-month-old baby girl Poppy, he considered the enormity of the task ahead and felt, above all, grateful. Grateful because in the background his wife Helen and a selection of close friends and relatives were busy in a last-minute meeting, talking, planning — all for him.

“I’m well aware how lucky I am to have that network of people around me to make it happen,” he says two months after the attempt, in which he took nearly 40 minutes off Gethin Butler’s 17-year-old record for a new mark of 43:25.13. “We got the A-team out that day.”

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