401

by Ben Smith

  ‘Why?!’

  ‘I can’t tell you, Mum, I can’t tell you...’

  I told him not to worry about going back to school, that he was never going back, that whatever it was, he was safe with us. And all he kept saying was: ‘Don’t be angry, please don’t be angry.’ I told him we weren’t angry, that we were hurt and frightened for him, that we loved him very much and that he must have been desperate. He told us we didn’t know the half of it, but still wouldn’t give us any details. And when I asked what we could do to make it better, he took me by the hand, led me to the medicine cupboard in the kitchen and said: ‘If you love me, you’ll help me take all of these.’ That’s something no parent wants to see or hear. He was just so broken, so broken…

  ••••••••••

  I can’t remember any of that episode, Mum only told me about it a couple of years ago. That must have been the point at which I lost all semblance of control. Mum and Dad must have been terrified. That’s when the decision was made to take me out of school. The one thing that hurt me about that was not being in the swimming team photo. My only real achievement, and there was no record of it.

  After that, I had a complete nervous breakdown. That’s a very sketchy period of my life, partly because I’ve suppressed it. Mum packed me off to see a counsellor, but I only went because I was told to. I wasn’t really open to it, but I pretended to be: ‘Yes, of course I’ll talk about my feelings and everything else, deal with it all and everything will be OK…’ As Mum says, I was a good liar. I didn’t give that counsellor anything, but I must have done a pretty good job at seeming normal because I soon got a clean bill of health. Mum and Dad got me a private tutor and I somehow ended up with a C and an E in my maths and physics A-levels. So much for my education not suffering. But I don’t want my parents to feel guilty; they went through so much shit as well. I know they never wanted to send us both to boarding school – I honestly believe they would have investigated all other options before making that choice – but sometimes life makes choices difficult.

  ••••••••••

  Marathon number 75 in the bag, I squelch my way back to the car park in Swansea, where Florence – my campervan – is resting. And what do you know? There’s a parking ticket slapped on the windscreen. But it’s going to take more than that to ruin my day. When you’ve been through what I went through – the beatings, the mental torture, the humiliation, the hollowing-out of the soul – what’s a parking ticket? That night, I remember what Mum said to me, after finding out I tried to take my own life: ‘There’s a reason why you’re here on this planet. You might not know what that reason is yet, but you will figure it out one day.’

  A wise woman.

  Chapter 3

  A Little Bit Unhinged

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. You’re probably reading this book because you heard about this Challenge I cooked up and wondered what would make anybody want to do something so crazy. I’ve already touched upon my motivations, and those motivations will become much clearer. But first, let me tell you a bit about The 401 Challenge itself: a bit about how I came up with the idea and why I did it, but also about the planning, logistics and those all-important nuts and bolts that held the whole mad project together. Once you’ve got the picture, you can be with me every step of the way...

  I’d always seen myself doing something big. Not necessarily completing 401 marathons in 401 days big, but something where I could say afterwards: ‘That was different.’ A lot of people do crazy challenges because they’ve had a lot of crap in their life, because there’s nothing like going through crap in your life to make you realise that life is a finite thing. But I never viewed it as a case of trying to fix my soul or anything deep like that. I had dealt with a lot of the stuff from my past before I started planning The 401 Challenge and having dealt with it, this energy was released inside me. The time I used to spend worrying about stuff needed to be filled with something positive. I needed a new focus, a new direction; I needed an adventure. The 401 Challenge was it.

  ••••••••••

  Andy Davis, Ben’s personal trainer: When Ben first came to me, he was still smoking and very unfit. To be honest, he was a wreck. He had no muscle on him, 30 per cent body fat and you wouldn’t have thought he was capable of running one marathon, let alone 401. He started getting fitter and losing weight, and one day he came into the gym and said: ‘Andy, I’ve got something to tell you – I’m thinking about running 401 marathons in 401 days.’ It was such a ridiculous task and I was worried for him. I told him he was mad, that his body would shut down after about 60. But he told me all about the bullying and just seemed so determined. I didn’t try to talk him out of it, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to. And from the moment he told me, I just knew he would finish. So I said: ‘OK. This is the plan…’

  A few weeks in, he said to me: ‘I’ve handed in my notice, so I’m really gonna have to do this Challenge now.’ For eight months, Ben worked with me for three days a week and did weight training the rest of the time. By the time he started the Challenge, we’d got his body fat down to 14 per cent, he had quite a bit of muscle on him and he was as fit and ready as he was ever going to be.

  ••••••••••

  I also passionately believed that people shouldn’t have to go through what I went through, so I knew I wanted to raise awareness and money for charities I really cared about. Kidscape and Stonewall do a lot of great work trying to prevent bullying in schools, but I still felt passionately that a lot of bullying in the UK was being swept under the carpet. You’d hear about it once a year, during Anti-Bullying Week, when it would be all over the TV and newspapers, and then there would be silence, other than when some poor family lost their son or daughter through bullying. So I wanted to spend a whole year, or more, raising the issue all over the UK. You don’t want to be the only person shouting, you want lots of others to join in. I also wanted to challenge people, to inspire them to do different things, take what I got from running and give that to other people. But because I wasn’t a celebrity, with the backing of the media and lots of financial help, I knew my Challenge had to be verging on the insane if I was going to raise anywhere near £250,000 for Kidscape and Stonewall, which I made my target.

  ••••••••••

  Nikki Kerr, head of fundraising at Kidscape: In May 2015, I got a call from Ben, completely out of the blue. He told me that he was attempting this challenge and wanted to raise money for Kidscape. I put down the phone, turned to my chief executive and said: ‘I’ve just been speaking to someone who’s going to run 401 marathons in 401 days.’ She said: ‘You what?’ I’d had various people contact me with all sorts of hair-brained ideas, so I took Ben’s with a pinch of salt. But he followed up with an email and more calls and it soon became apparent that he had thought about all the angles and was very serious about doing it. So I thought: ‘Yeah, let’s give this a go. What do we have to lose? If he ‘only’ manages to do 100 marathons, that’s still an incredible achievement and would display the values of resilience that Kidscape shares.

  He was so honest and open about why he was doing it, right from the start. I’ve had meetings with many, many people who have come up with a proposal but have hidden agendas or are not telling the whole story. But when Ben was telling me about his own experiences and why he wanted to do what he was doing, I could tell it came straight from the heart. He wasn’t looking for personal gain, he did not want accolades or celebrity status, he just really wanted to do what he could to promote the work that we do.

  For a small charity like us, it’s vital to have advocates like Ben, because we don’t have a big marketing budget. The more people talk about bullying, the more likely other people are going to say: ‘This is happening to me or somebody I know.’ And Kidscape can help. The consequences of not talking about bullying are many. You might not achieve as well academically as you might have done; you might find it very hard to have
relationships because you don’t trust people; it can affect your work life. It affects people until their dying day. People in their 80s and 90s can still remember in great detail things that happened to them when they were eight years old, even the names of their bullies. Kidscape’s vision is for all children to grow up in a world free from bullying.

  ••••••••••

  When I initially came up with the idea – more about that later – I wanted it to be fluid, allowing room for the project to grow organically. But because I’d been working in the corporate world and had done quite a lot of project management work, I figured that if I wanted it to succeed, I had to have a solid structure in place. To fund the project, I initially used the money from the sale of my house, along with any belongings I felt I didn’t need. Drastic, I know, but corporate sponsors didn’t exactly clamber on board. And after clearing debts, visiting different countries to train and buying various other bits and pieces, I was left with about £4,000. I had to pay for accommodation, petrol, food and various sundries – for 401 days – so we knew we’d have to rely on operational donations from individuals and sell a lot of 401 merchandise.

  Mum and Dad kindly bought me a campervan, which I would eat in, wash in, work in and, hopefully only occasionally, sleep in – and as no one else was in a position to come with me, I would be in the van on my own. I would also drive it to the start of my route every morning, and to wherever I needed to be after that day’s marathon was run. I named the campervan Florence, after my Grandma, who passed away a few years earlier. Grandma was very loving and one of those people you knew you could always rely on. She was also very strong-willed, driven and independent. Had she still been with us, Grandma probably would have dropped everything and come with me.

  Having drawn up a detailed route with Dad, outlining exactly where I would be on any given day, we contacted running clubs all over the country, asking them to help organise a marathon course for when I was passing through, as well as keep me company on the way round. Let’s face it, running 401 marathons in 401 days on your own could send a man quite mad, and those people I hoped to run with would be key to keeping me sane and spreading the message further afield. Because I didn’t want to spend too many nights in the van, or pay for too many hotel rooms, we also hoped running club members would be kind enough to put me up for the night, feed me, let me use their shower and do my laundry. Physiotherapy would obviously be of paramount importance, so the plan was to contact therapists and ask if they’d mind giving me a post-marathon rub-down for free. The 401 Challenge was clearly going to rely heavily on the kindness of strangers – and my wonderful, crack 401 team.

  Because the whole operation was run on a shoestring, every member of the 401 team was an unpaid volunteer. Dad was appointed head of logistics; Mum would look after accommodation, physio, and finances; Tolu Osinnowo was brought in as project manager, also in charge of branding; Vicky Burr would look after the media side of things; I’d look after the social media, often from the back of the van; and Kyle would kind of oversee everything. But much more of Kyle later…

  ••••••••••

  Tolu Osinnowo, 401 project manager: I heard of Ben’s challenge through social media. I was so intriged so I got in touch, and we just clicked. We were on the phone for ages, talking about why bullying was so close to his heart. But I was on the dole, really needed to get a paid job to pay my bills, and generally wasn’t coping very well. I thought I was worthless, was really depressed, having anxiety attacks. I was actually a little bit suicidal. But I didn’t tell Ben about any of this, I hid it.

  Ben phoned me two or three months later and said: ‘Hi Tolu, I’ve found two new charities that might be able to support me with this – Kidscape and Stonewall – and I’d really like you to be my project manager. You had some really good ideas and I think you just get what I’m trying to do.’ I was part-time managing a bar, but I thought I’d be able to manage 10 hours a week, and it just snowballed from there. Initially, the plan was pretty much Ben just running a marathon every day for 401 days, but then all these other things started coming into play: how were we going to get money to support Ben? How were we going to pay for food? How were we going to promote it? It quickly turned into this really big machine, and we realised it needed to be a brand, with merchandising to go with it. I studied graphic design at uni, so I’d come up with all these ideas, send them over, and his reaction was always: ‘Oh my God, Tolu! This is amazing, exactly what I had in mind.’ We never really talked things through, but it always seemed to work. It was really weird how in sync we were.

  ••••••••••

  BEN’S 401 CONSECUTIVE ­MARATHONS TO COMBAT ­BULLYING

  BRISTOL EVENING POST,

  1 SEPTEMBER 2015

  ‘…Between now and October 5, 2016 Ben, 33, plans to run a remarkable 10,506 miles – the equivalent of here to Sydney, Australia. To do so he will have to take on board 2.4 million calories – around 6,000 a day – and spend around 2,400 hours running…’

  ••••••••••

  DAY 1: It’s 1 September 2015, the morning of the first of what I hope will be 401 marathons, and all I can think is: ‘Shit, I’m not ready for this.’ We’d anticipated there wouldn’t be a massive send-off, and when I turned up to Bristol’s Millennium Square that morning, there were six of us, including a few friends from work, my local running club and my friend’s dog. A couple of people in suits wander past, eye up my van, parked in the middle of the square – you can’t miss it for The 401 Challenge branding – and I can see them thinking: ‘What the bloody hell is that all about?’

  That was the general reaction: ‘You’re doing what? Running 401 marathons? In a row? Are you serious? No chance! I wouldn’t even bother.’ People looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. Some people didn’t think I’d start The 401 Challenge, let alone finish it. I found it a little bit frustrating to start with, but I came to expect it. And then I learned to ignore it. I’d walk away thinking: ‘OK, that’s your opinion, but I’m going to prove you wrong.’

  Maybe you do have to be a little bit unhinged to even consider running 401 marathons in a row, but who says I’m the mad one? Maybe it’s the rest of you. There’s a madness about complaining and whingeing and not doing anything about it, especially when you know you’ve only got one life. And those people who complain and whinge about their own lives are the first to judge anybody trying to live their life differently. That had been me, constantly telling myself I needed to change my circumstances, but I did bugger all about it for so long. I only had myself to blame; I was so hell-bent on achieving everything I’d been told I had to achieve to be successful in life, from when I was a kid, and I was scared of the alternatives, terrified to even consider thinking in a different way. I’d settled, told myself: ‘No, I’m fine with my lot. If anybody else wants to do something different, I’ll watch from a distance.’ How awful is that? One life, and I’d settled on how it was going to roll out, from my 20s until the day I was old and grey. That’s where I was. And I wasn’t happy. But I stepped back from the situation and thought: ‘I don’t want to live this life anymore. I don’t know what life I want to live, but I know it’s not this one. But if this isn’t happiness, what is? Maybe if I start to think in a different way, I’ll find it. What if I get rid of the money and the possessions? That makes sense, because I can categorically say they’re not making me happy. And once they’re gone, maybe I’ll have a clearer idea of what happiness is.’ I suddenly realised you can do what you want, when you want to do it. If you really want to.

  ••••••••••

  I opened the medicine cabinet, unscrewed all the bottles I could see, scattered pills all over the kitchen floor and thought: ‘I’ve tried this before, so it would be easy enough to try it again. Only this time it might just work.’ Sitting there, I just felt so sad, so heartbroken and so alone. Call it complacency, call it a subconscious desire to be caught, call it whatever you
want, but my wife had discovered my secret. I hadn’t been cheating, but I had begun to explore my sexuality, looking at men having sex on the computer. I was usually very careful to clear the history, like you do. This one time, I’d forgotten. It’s amazing how such small things can have such huge ramifications.

  We’d only been married for two months and I was visiting one of my accounts in the North. Driving back down the motorway from York to Bristol, I was shattered – I couldn’t wait to get home and slump in front of the TV. But when I walked through the front door, she was waiting for me. She gave me a hug as if everything was normal, before we went into the lounge. But everything was far from normal. After revealing she’d discovered my secret, I became desperate, like a beggar on his knees, trying to gather up the scattered scraps of his life. I must have made for a pathetic sight, but I felt so very guilty and regretful.

  After my excuses had dried up, she walked out and went straight to her brother’s house, while I slumped to the floor, still wearing my suit, thinking: ‘That’s it. It’s over.’ I was terrified of being left alone, just like that young boy walking the dark corridors at school, feeling for the walls, not knowing what I might find and what they might throw at me the following morning. That’s when I opened the pills and thought: ‘It would be easier for everybody if I took these and disappeared.’ But just like when I was that young boy, sitting on my bed and cutting at my wrists with a knife, I couldn’t finish the job.

  After I put the pills back in their bottles, finally peeled myself off the floor and climbed the stairs, I could see myself, as if I was having an outer-body experience. In bed, I stared up at the ceiling, every tick of the alarm clock like a dull peck to my temple. When I went downstairs the following morning, I was still consumed by fear. Then, suddenly, I heard a key in the door and in she walked. Instead of being angry, her brother had said: ‘Men do stupid things. Just give him another chance, listen to him.’ So she gave me a big hug and said: ‘Let’s give this a go, let’s work through this.’ She didn’t ask me if I was gay, but I told her I didn’t know who I was. I was just so grateful that she had forgiven me and come back. I kicked everything that had happened the previous evening into the long grass. From my whole life falling out from underneath me, suddenly everything was fixed. Except, of course, it wasn’t. Actually, the lid had been ripped right off, I just couldn’t see it yet.