DCIM100GOPRO

Venue: The Royal Mile, Gates of Holyrood House Venue 266 Dates:  1 – 26 Aug 2013 Time: 07.00 (ends after 26.2 miles) Tickets: FREE 

vickiweitz is not an athlete. At school she avoided PE by rubbing grass into her eyes to bring on hay fever. But she is interested in the place where sport and art meet; how the common elements of preparation, anxiety, movement and performance affect each discipline.

So during the 2013 Fringe, artist vickiweitz will set off each day at 7am from Holyrood Palace gates. She will run 26.2 miles, come rain come shine, along Edinburgh’s Royal Mile in August – one of the most crowded streets in Europe.

There are a few self-set rules she needs to adhere to strictly:

1. She must start at 7am each day

2. She must find someone to say ‘GO’ at the start of each marathon

3. She must run between Holyrood Palace (at the bottom) up to the Castle (at the top) until she has covered 26.2 miles

4. She must repeat this for 26 days

vickiweitz has never done this before (has anyone?) so would be thrilled if people come along, find her, watch her, cheer her, help her, join her and follow her (@vickiweitz)

The current world record for the most marathons run on consecutive days by a female is 13 by Cristina Borra in Turin, Italy, from 16-28 February 2010. These were run in the comparative calm of Ruffini Park rather than through crowded streets thronging with tourists, festival goers and performers handing out flyers.

vickiweitz will be encouraging the crowd to run with her, follow her on twitter and read her blog at www.vickiweitz.co.uk <http://www.vickiweitz.co.uk>

vickiweitz is interested in the idea of domestic performance – taking something quite ordinary and turning it into something else through repetition and magnification. She’d like to know what motivates us; how do we manage to go about our daily life even if it’s really difficult. She’d also like to know how our external and internal worlds affect our performance. She is working with The Human Performance Unit at Essex University to investigate the effect of diet, psychology and training on performance. She’d like to discover how the support of a crowd drives an athlete through a challenge of such a scale. She’d like to know how she’ll get on.

Twenty-six marathons in twenty-six days has been selected for Escalator East To Edinburgh. Each year Escalator East to Edinburgh helps artists and arts organisations to raise their profile and perform to new audiences as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. www.vickiweitz.co.uk <http://www.vickiweitz.co.uk>

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John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.