by Ben Smith
He’d mentioned cycling across America before, but I wasn’t that convinced because of the logistics involved. But even then, I said: ‘Fantastic, crack on.’ You’ve got to support your children, full on, from day one. It might sound callous, but if it’s not going to work, it’s up to them to find that out, it’s not your place to tell them. He soon worked out for himself that he wasn’t going to be able to do it. But one day he said: ‘I’ve decided I want to try to run 401 marathons in 401 days.’ And I replied: ‘Fine.’ After that, we got straight down to planning. He had most of it already worked out in his head. He’d already decided he’d be running around England, Wales and Scotland, but not Northern Ireland, purely for logistical reasons. He’d planned a rough route in his head, so that he’d be in the South for certain official marathons, and not in Scotland for winter. He put a huge amount of time and effort into it. And because he looked so determined, I thought: ‘Yeah, he’ll probably get there.’
He then spent the next 18 months working out if his body was capable of doing it, by running all those marathons. He ran in different climates, different weather, and when he ran seven marathons in seven states in America, I knew his body was quite capable and his health wouldn’t be an issue. I was also confident of making it work logistically. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was what was in his head. But I was with him in Germany for the 2014 Berlin Marathon, and after he finished, I looked at him and thought: ‘Yeah, you’ve got it mentally. It will be money or injury that stops him from completing it, nothing else.’ Once you’ve got it mentally, it takes a lot to stop you doing anything. Occasionally he would say: ‘Are you sure I should do as many as 401?’ And I’d say: ‘You don’t want to stop at 70 or 100 or 200 and think: ‘You know what, I wish I’d done 401.’ Millions of people have done that, set themselves a target, reached it and thought: ‘I wish I’d done more.’
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It was so nice to be with Dad in Berlin, where he had spent time with the RAF. He showed me the sights, we chatted and I asked his advice, because I wanted to know how he felt about The 401 Challenge. He had never been involved in this part of my life, but having this chance to talk through the 401 plan with me, and seeing how comfortable I looked after the marathon (I did it in 3 hours, 32 minutes, which was my personal best until Oslo two weeks later, where I ran 3 hours, 17 minutes) convinced him I could do it. Having examined me up close, he deciphered this huge change in me, and that I was now a far stronger person.
Mum and Dad have never said: ‘You can’t do that.’ It’s always been: ‘Whatever you want to do, we’ll support you – what do you need from us?’ At the same time, they never dictated to me what I should do with my life. Dad saw difficult things being done all the time with his job, and made the seemingly impossible happen. I like the fact they’ve given me the ability to do the outlandish, and never questioned it. It’s not that they didn’t care about my health or my safety, they just saw how important it was to me. Most people stick to the main road, but I like to think I’m one of the people who doesn’t think like that anymore. I believe that, while maybe there is a plan laid out for you, the fun part is doing everything you can to fuck that plan up. That’s when life gets interesting.
I had allowed a couple of weeks before setting off on the Challenge to try and put some weight on, and cut back on the running. I’d run 30 marathons in just over two years, 10 already in 2015, so didn’t want to blow up before I’d even started. I moved out of my flat a week before the start of the Challenge and was still selling my stuff the day before – on eBay and a local Portishead website – because I didn’t want to get fined for leaving it behind. In the end, I was saying to friends: ‘Do you want any free furniture? Come and get it now, because I’m taking it to the tip, first thing in the morning!’
And, suddenly, there I was, standing on the start line in Bristol. That’s life, things happen to you, you make choices based on those experiences, and sometimes those choices take you to a place you never dreamt you’d be, even a couple of years earlier. Those choices might be right or wrong, but they’re usually right at the time you make them. And this is the choice I’d made now. This is what I wanted to do, so I did it. To be honest, I had no idea if running 401 marathons in 401 days was possible, but I was going to give it a bloody good go.
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DAYS 84–91: During Anti-Bullying Week in November 2015, we launch The 401 Virtual Challenge, which was developed by a company called EtchRock, in conjunction with Virgin Money Giving. It allows people to join in wherever they are in the world – by running a 5k, 10k, half-marathon or marathon – to raise money for the 401, the aim being they’ll run 401,000 miles between them. It’s very cool, but I have to admit, I’ve been feeling down again. The weather in Essex is pretty bad, and the whole thing is becoming routine, which was never the intention. Out with the Harlow Running Club on day 85, I meet a little French bulldog wearing Chanel perfume, proof indeed that even dogs smell better than me. Every day as winter approaches there seems to be a new storm with a new name beginning with a new letter of the alphabet, and I’ve lost my wallet, although I don’t know where or when. I hardly have a minute to speak to any of my friends, and I just want to be out having a few beers and a few laughs. Instead, I’m sat in a van, watching yet another episode of Grey’s Anatomy on my laptop, as rain hammers on the roof. My head hurts, my body aches, I don’t particularly want to be here…
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Annette Rainbow, masseuse: I massaged Ben after marathon 80 in Oxford, having seen an advert on Facebook. If anyone is doing something extreme – swimming the English Channel, spending 30 days on a rowing machine – I like to offer help, especially if it’s for charity. Bless him, Ben was just so tired and so tight. I felt like I could break him. He felt hard but very brittle, so that I almost didn’t want to touch him. He was struggling to eat enough calories, was up late every night doing his social media, and he was definitely struggling trying to find any sort of rhythm. After Oxford, I followed him every day on Facebook, to make sure he was OK. But I thought he’d do it, because failure just wasn’t part of his make-up.
When I first met him, he hugged me, brought me a cup of tea and we sat and chatted. He thanked me for being so supportive and wanted to know all about me. That’s Ben all over. I was bullied as a child, and it was really nice to speak to somebody who wanted to make a difference. I had so much therapy to deal with it all, and I feel like I’m through the other side. I’m also a hypnotherapist, and I’ve done my own research into why children bully. And Ben’s honesty resonated with me. A bully’s biggest weapon is their secret, and by Ben talking about his own experiences – saying it’s OK to speak about what happened – he helps bring other bullies’ secrets out into the open.
Ben is surrounded by people who are 100 per cent nice, and because of that, everything is possible. I’m now known locally as ‘the lady who massaged the man from 401’. I talked a lot about Ben at work, put up posters, and I reckon between 10–20 per cent of my clients have taken up walking or running as a result of me meeting him. Some of them have even given up smoking. The Ben effect is huge. He’s a role model, and has made an impact on so many people.
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NOVEMBER 2015 IN NUMBERS
Marathons: 30
Miles run: 791.1 (average per day: 26.4)
Running time: 162:08.27 hours (average per day: 5:13.49)
Number of people run with: 349
Distance personal bests: 38
First marathons/ultra-marathons: 22
Pints of cider: 16
Flat whites: 30
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DAYS 92–99: I’m surprised at how much we’ve struggled to get people to donate. Maybe it’s because they still don’t believe I’ll finish, or maybe what used to be considered slightly unhinged has become the new normal. I should have made it 501 marathons instead. I get a nice
boost in Norwich on day 92, when two old ladies who’ve seen me on the local news give me £15. I also seem to have picked up a bit of a Norfolk accent, and I’ve only been here a few days. That’s one of the problems of being a military kid, accents stick fast.
People have started commenting on my diet on Facebook, because it’s become a bit samey. My friend Jo keeps sending me text messages saying: ‘Eat more greens!’ For my favourite meal, I get a mixing bowl, rip up a whole cooked supermarket chicken – skin and everything – and chuck it in, pour in a pot of feta, a pot of olives, olive oil and coriander, add salt and pepper, add some microwaved Uncle Ben’s rice, and eat the whole lot in one go, straight from the bowl, with the first thing that comes to hand. The naysayers don’t know what they’re talking about, it doesn’t get much better. The weird thing is, my weight having stabilised, it’s now starting to fall again.
On day 95 in Cambridge, I’m joined by my friend Nick, but no one from the local club has turned up to help us around the route. That’s happened a few times: whoever we were dealing with has just given us a route and maybe not told anyone else from their running club. I first met Nick in Wokingham on day 63, and he ran with me for five days, heading towards Wales. When he first suggested spending almost a week with me, I thought: ‘Oh shit, what if we don’t get on?’ It’s like when you’re on holiday and you’re wary of speaking to anybody, in case they latch onto you and you can’t get rid of them. But me and Nick are kindred spirits.
Nick works for the Metropolitan Police and his running has been a sanctuary for him, like it is for me. We both have a penchant for drinking cider in pubs, so we end up doing a lot of that on our travels. Put us together and we’re like two little kids, always getting into trouble. I love Nick to death, he’s probably the closest thing I’ve got to a best mate. In fact, he’s like a brother, so when he finds out nobody from the local club turned up, he’s really pissed off and I have to try and calm him down: ‘For fuck’s sake, why? Don’t they know what’s going on here?!’
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Nick Dransfield, Ben’s running brother: I was out running and listening to the Marathon Talk podcast when they started talking about this 401 Challenge. When I got home, I said to my wife: ‘There’s this lunatic attempting to run 401 marathons in 401 days. He’ll never do it.’ I thought the bloke was crackers, but when I found out he was passing through Wokingham and had nobody to run with, I thought I’d best go and see who he is and what he’s all about, before he breaks and falls to bits.
I think Ben was a bit shocked when I rocked up and told him I was thinking of running with him for four days. But I thought: ‘If we don’t get on, I’ll just cry off after one.’ Halfway through that first marathon, he said: ‘Right, I’ve got to stop for lunch…’ Having run a few marathons myself, I said: ‘I beg your pardon? What do you mean, stop for lunch?’ We went into a pub in Wokingham and Ben started eyeing up the cider list. And I was like, ‘You can’t have lunch and a cider at half-time in a marathon!’ I forced some food into me but it just didn’t sit well. By day four, I was totally on board with the whole ethos – ‘Right, where’s the next pub? Let’s have a nice bite and crack on with the second half…’ When I realised it was simply about doing the distance and not trying to break any records, I thought: ‘Actually, if he stays injury-free, this guy could do it.’
A few mates started giving me a bit of grief, saying, ‘You’re not even doing 1 per cent of what he’s doing’, so I thought I’d up it to five marathons on the bounce. We were both very childish, had a really good laugh on the runs and made a very good bond, so much so that we were soon calling each other ‘brother from another mother’! He told me a lot about his life, and I shared my stories with him, because he’s a great listener. I was shocked when he told me about his younger years, it was horrible to hear. Like Ben, I’m from a military background and went to boarding school, but was never bullied. But I saw bullying and, stupidly, didn’t do anything to stop it. As a teenager you just want to be liked, so I was one of those kids who just stood there laughing along, which made me just as bad as the people who were carrying it out.
After the first day, I could sit back and watch how he dealt with it all. I got to see him in the morning, when it was just the two of us having a coffee or breakfast, and he’d be shattered, telling me how tired he was. If I’m shattered, I don’t want to be friendly with people and posing for selfies but he had this game face that he was able to snap into, and suddenly any negativity would be gone. He’d be so welcoming and supportive towards people of any ability. If you had said to me two years ago that a marathon could consist of lunch, a pint of cider and mucking around for six hours, I probably would have said: ‘Nah, that’s not a marathon.’ Now, having done it, I can say: ‘It absolutely is.’ If it says 26.2 miles on your watch at the end of your day, you’ve done a marathon.
The first day in Cambridge was another long one. It was on a Saturday, in an area with big running communities, so it was disappointing that nobody else turned up. I just thought: ‘I don’t expect everyone to go out of the way to run with him, but it doesn’t take much to rock up and do 10km.’ It made me sad – not so much that he could have been on his own, more so that people missed out on running with this amazing chap. Ben was going through a rough patch – he had been on the road for almost 100 days, away from his partner and family, and it was taking its toll. But I never got the feeling he was wavering or might quit. That’s just not in his make-up and he was so focused on the project. He just needed a shoulder: ‘Come on, mate, let’s get through this and move on to the next one…’
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DAY 100: I celebrate passing 100 marathons with the Northampton Road Runners, lots of cake and three personal bests. There is also a mention from Chris Evans, who is a keen runner, on his BBC Radio 2 show, which is a very nice touch indeed and really makes my morning.
I make sure I’m running in the Lincolnshire area in the run-up to Christmas, to be with my family, and in Sleaford, on 22 December, I run with a really impressive kid called Jordan, who is only 16. He’s been bullied at school, for being a bit different, and he actually says to me while we’re running: ‘I’m not sure I should do the whole course, people might think I’m weird.’ So I tell him: ‘It’s completely up to you if you want to do it or not, but I promise you, once you’ve done it, you will get nothing but positive feedback.’ His mum is following in the car, keeping an eye on him, making sure he’s hydrated, and he ends up running his first marathon. That just blows my mind. That night, I post about him on social media, and he gets thousands of messages of support from the running community. Three days later, on Christmas Day, he runs his second marathon with me!
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RUNNER TO COMPLETE 100th MARATHON IN NORTHAMPTON
NORTHAMPTON CHRONICLE AND ECHO, 9 DECEMBER 2015
‘…The 401 Challenge isn’t about being a victim, it is about showing people that no matter what you go through growing up, there can always be a positive outcome if you want there to be…’
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DAYS 116–122: Christmas Day is actually quite normal, apart from the marathon in the morning. And the fact I get to eat two Christmas dinners. Funnily enough, I get a lot of running kit as presents, most of it waterproof gear. Better late than never! It’s nice to be at home in Lincoln, but I’m constantly thinking about having to leave again, which doesn’t make it the most relaxing Christmas Day.
The turnout in Nottingham on day 120 is the biggest of the Challenge so far, with 54 people running with me, but on New Year’s Eve, day 122, Derby blows Nottingham out of the water with 74 people, which, given the rivalry between the two cities, the Derby lot find highly amusing. Unfortunately, on the way round I accidentally turn my watch off, so when I get to the scheduled finish I have to run three more miles. It’s funny how many people want to pick at the data, keyboard warriors on forums who just want to discr
edit you. It seems they don’t really understand why or what I am doing, so I didn’t want to give them any ammunition. With 122 marathons behind me, and 279 to go, I bid 2015 farewell.
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DECEMBER 2015 IN NUMBERS
Marathons: 31
Miles run: 818.6 (average per day: 26.4)
Running time: 158:12.19 hours (average per day: 5:06.12)
Number of people run with: 541
Distance personal bests: 36
First marathons/ultra-marathons: 19
Pints of cider: 16
Flat whites: 31
Chapter 9
A State of Disbelief
If I’m being honest, not everybody gets what I’m trying to do or makes good on their promises. Certainly, 99 per cent of the people who have got involved – whether by offering me a bed for the night, feeding me, giving me massage therapy for free, turning up to runs with shopping bags full of food – are wonderful. The amount of Jaffa Cakes I’ve been given – because I once mentioned I liked them on Facebook – is ludicrous, my van’s shower is full of them. I’ve even had to put a post out: ‘Can’t eat any more Jaffa Cakes…’ But there have been people who said they’d help out and haven’t, which makes me distrust people and means the core team have had to pick up the pieces. But I guess that’s the same with anything, and you figure these things out as you go along.
