Some adventures are about slowing down and soaking it all in. This one was the opposite. Together with my friend Spike Reid, I set out to be the fastest people to paddle the non-tidal River Thames by stand up paddle board, from Lechlade in Gloucestershire to Teddington Lock in London, all 129 miles of it, on a single tandem board.

There was no time for lazy mornings. We were on the water at 4am for beautiful early mist and slow sunrises, with 27 miles done before lunch and Oxford still ahead. Days stretched to 18 hours, sleep was rationed to a few precious hours each night (eight in total across the whole trip), and the river did little to help, with depressingly low flow and some horrible headwinds. What got us through was relentless positivity, hours of mindless trivia games and, mercifully, not being thrown off the board.

We finished at Teddington in 59 hours and 10 minutes, passing Oxford, Reading, Henley and Marlow along the way, with faces of steel and smiles that only got bigger once the aches began to fade. It was the first ever known descent of the river by tandem SUP and an un-official world record for the fastest time by any form of SUP!