Greggs loving runner completes marathon while eating at 29 bakeries

A Greggs-loving runner consumed 9,600 calories of sausage rolls when he scoffed his way between each of the bakery’s 29 branches in Newcastle.

Bradley Whalen-Griffiths loves the bakery’s products so much that he built it into a 26-mile training routine.

Over the course of five-and-a-half hours, Bradley, from South Shields, South Tyneside, spent £36.80 scoffing 29 of the savoury pork treats.

Each contains 331 calories, meaning Bradley ate twice as much as he burnt and nearly four times the daily recommended amount for a man.

‘I started to struggle in the city centre as there are so many Greggs close to one another — I was eating and running, eating and running,’ the ship navigation officer said.

‘I can polish off six sausage rolls easily but this was some feat, even for me.’

Bradley undertook the challenge as part of his training for the 34-mile Lakeland Trails ultra marathon in the Lake District next summer.

He said: ‘I have to get used to eating while running, although I don’t think you’re supposed to eat sausage rolls.

‘I saw other people had walked around all the Greggs before but that wasn’t enough of a challenge.

‘My go-to Greggs order is a katsu chicken bake but the sausage roll is iconic and the only fitting baked good for this challenge.’

Bradley started at Greggs – which opened its first store in Newcastle in 1951 – on Kingston Park in the west of the city.

He then headed to the West End and along the Quayside past the Tyne Bridge.

He grabbed another sausage roll at the store in Walker in the east, before heading back to finish in the city centre.

He added: ‘I ate around 9,600 calories but only burned off half of that, so I ate a bit lighter the next day.

‘Surprisingly, I didn’t get a stitch while I was running.

‘A friend joked about doing a festive bake marathon, but I think that might be too heavy.’

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