by Ben Smith
Somewhat healed, I have a long, hard word with myself. I tell myself never to get cocky and over-confident again. I need to look at the rest of the Challenge logically and strategically, without too much emotion. I’ll add on extra miles when I feel like it; on the days I don’t, I won’t. I’ll walk when I need to, become more selfish. At times, it has to be about me rather than other people, because it’s me who has to get to the end.
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INSPIRATION OF THE WEEK – RUN THAT BY US AGAIN!
SUNDAY MIRROR, 26 JUNE 2016
‘…Ben now plans to jog an extra 2.5 miles every day to make sure he completes 10,506 miles in 401 days as planned. Ben said: “We’ve got our work cut out, but I’m feeling positive…”’
Chapter 11
Falling Apart
The Challenge was 24 hours a day, seven days a week; up at six, to bed at 11, constantly on the go in between; doing school visits in the morning, introducing myself to new people before each marathon, all wanting pictures, all asking the same questions for the next six hours, questions I’d heard thousands of times before. My answers were getting shorter and shorter, although I still had to make sure the people asking them were happy and comfortable and enjoying the experience. After each marathon, my massage therapist would ask all the same questions again, and I’d be asked all the same questions again when I finally got to my accommodation, maybe two or three times over if they had kids. Add in social media, media interviews, and it all became mentally exhausting, especially when we were approaching 300 marathons. It was lovely that they were all interested, and it might seem churlish to complain about it, but sometimes I just wanted to shut off from the world for the sake of my sanity.
It got to the point where we were being offered a huge amount of free accommodation, but I couldn’t bring myself to stay with people. So I told Dad and Kyle that I’d stay with people two days a week because I wanted to maintain that connection, but that the rest of the time I needed to be on my own. The other options available to us were campsites or low-budget hotels (I spent one night in a car park in Bodmin on day 16, and felt scared, like a sitting duck, because the branding on Florence wasn’t exactly subtle), but we still had to find money for them, and we’d pretty much run out. All the cash from the sale of my house and possessions had gone, and it wasn’t just accommodation we needed money for, but also food (remember, I was putting away anything between 5–6,000 calories a day, about twice the recommended average), petrol (£90 a tank) and new 401 merchandise. So in July, after my 310th marathon in Fort William, in the Scottish Highlands, I put a video out and made a direct plea for financial help. I’d resisted it and discussed it with the team at length, because I did feel a bit guilty asking for money and never wanted to beg. But I had to be pragmatic and honest about it – I needed to do everything in my power to complete the Challenge and this was the only way that was going to happen. I couldn’t have lived with myself if the Challenge had failed because it ran out of funding, because so many people had invested so much to get to this point, and not just the 401 team.
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Joanne Gould, one of the 401 notorious travellers: I ran with Ben 12 times during the Challenge, all marathons apart from one. The first time was Milton Keynes, on 6 April 2016. Because I’m not a confident person, I was really nervous. So on the way there, I said to my husband: ‘I can’t do this, I need to go back.’ It had nothing to do with the running, because I love running, it was to do with the fact that I’m quite shy about meeting new people. My husband persuaded me to go through with it, and I’m so glad he did. When I got there, Ben was standing in the car park. I said hello and told him I was really out of my comfort zone. He was just so lovely, introduced me to everybody, and throughout the day he kept on checking I was OK. He was the one running 401 marathons, there were lots of people there apart from me, but he just made everybody feel included.
That first marathon was a really big deal for me, but running with Ben made me feel like I was part of something special. By extension, it made me feel special about myself, and that gave me more confidence. By the end, I was travelling across the country, on my own, meeting hundreds of new people. I’m 51 now, but meeting Ben changed how I look at myself. Ben taught me that it’s never too late to do something different; that you can overcome anything and achieve great things; and that by changing who you are, you can help change other people’s lives as well.
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Instead of setting up a GoFundMe page and asking for cash directly, I gave our 401 merchandise an extra push – T-shirts, hoodies, vests, wristbands – linked to the online shop and asked people to share it with as many people as possible. Luckily, the video got a lot of attention and had the desired effect. We had created our own 401 retail outlet and Kyle’s mum and dad, Pat and Colin, pretty much ran it on their own, for which I’m forever grateful. They were packing envelopes and parcels from their home near Blackpool and sent out almost £50,000-worth of merchandise during the course of the Challenge (although after costs taken out, we were left with about £10,000). They sent me a picture once, and all you could see were Pat’s eyes peering through this pile of parcels. Their living room looked like a sweatshop!
But we weren’t just struggling financially, the whole thing felt like it was falling apart. Not only did Dad end up in hospital with kidney stones – at the same time as Mum, who had had the first of many hip replacements, on top of her illness – but Tolu was managing a bar by night, managing The 401 Challenge by day and almost falling to pieces. We got a lady called Lucy Saunders, a friend of Vicky Burr, to help handle some of the PR, and Kyle became even more important, having come on board full-time in March, after quitting his PhD and moving back in with his mum and dad in Preston. We were also starting to plan the final few days – what were we going to do to make sure it finished with a bang? Put it this way, everyone became stretched to their limits and started to have little shirty moments with each other. One of the team would disappear for a few days to cool off, and I’m sure they all felt like quitting from time to time. I understood why, because they were exhausted, like me. And when you’re exhausted, you’re emotional, and things can get blown out of proportion.
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Tolu Osinnowo, 401 project manager: It wasn’t all rosy and there were times when I wanted to kill Ben. He’d text me and say: ‘I was running with this guy the other day and he told me he hadn’t received his 401 T-shirt.’ And I’d be thinking: ‘I’m shipping out merchandise every single day, responding to press enquiries, helping you update social media, driving my housemates mad by editing videos – which at one point meant playing “Runnin’” by Beyoncé about 500 times in a row – stop telling me about some bloke who hasn’t received his T-shirt!’
There would be massive problems going on behind the scenes, when we didn’t have a route planned, or we’d been booked by two schools on the same day, or another school had cancelled, but we never wanted to tell Ben about any of those things because he’s one of those people who takes everybody else’s problems on board. At one point we had to take him off the 401 email chain because he was trying to get involved. We had to tell him: ‘All you need to do is focus on running, keep yourself healthy and keep telling people why you’re doing what you’re doing.’
I was working Wednesday to Sunday at the bar, but because the bar was attached to a hotel that didn’t have a manager, I sometimes had to take on that role as well. Sometimes I’d start work at six in the evening and get home at four or five in the morning, before getting up a few hours later to answer emails about the 401. Towards the end of the Challenge, I felt like quitting. I was so inspired by what Ben was doing, so wanted to be a part of it and make sure it was a success, I was determined to be there at the end. But one of the things I learnt was that you have to look after yourself, otherwise you’re not going to be of any help to anyone else.
The week after
my 30th birthday, there were issues going on with my bar – sewage pipes exploding in the middle of the dancefloor, licensing issues – and I was also trying to organise the final marathon, which we wanted to be this all-singing, all-dancing event, and I started falling to pieces. Kyle came down to Brighton, sat me down and told me I needed to take a break, before reporting back to Ben. It was like a full-scale intervention. Ben made me see it was OK to admit that I wasn’t OK. He also told me that they loved me, that I was one of their closest friends, but that they loved me more than the project and wanted me to be OK. I grew up in foster care and didn’t always have people telling me that they cared about me, so Ben and Kyle telling me those things was just so nice. So I took a break and sought help.
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Although it might sound heartless, I didn’t feel guilty about affecting other people’s lives so much. I didn’t even feel responsible for Dad’s kidney stones, even though I’m pretty sure they were a result of the sheer stress he was under, having to do an 80-mile round trip to see Mum every day in hospital in Nottingham, while organising accommodation and routes for me. I don’t think I was selfish before the Challenge, but I learned to be. People think being selfish is a bad thing, but I don’t necessarily agree: if you want to achieve what is viewed as the impossible, you have to be a bit selfish sometimes. The team was ensuring the project would be a success, and in order for that to happen, they had to keep me happy. Everybody came aboard of their own free will and they were all aware of what was needed to complete the project. And, luckily, it never happened that everybody wanted to give up at the same time.
Lots of things went wrong, and we weren’t prepared for a lot of it, despite Dad’s stellar 60-page contingency dossier. Dad might have turned their dining room into a command centre, but he was the only person in it, everyone else was dotted all over the country. Most of the time, all I really had to do was wake up in the morning and think: ‘Right, this is what I’ve got to do today.’ All the information was downloaded for me onto Google Calendar, so I knew exactly where I was running, who I was running with, where I was staying, where the therapist was, all the times and contact details. But it’s like that old military quote: ‘A plan only survives first contact’. You can plan to the nth degree, but nobody had ever done anything on this scale before and the Challenge was constantly evolving, so we were always having to react to things.
Even with his background in operational management, I’m sure Dad learnt a lot – dealing with running clubs is not like dealing with officers in the RAF. There’s a hierarchy in the forces: if you ask for something, it gets done. Asking normal civilians to do things can be frustrating for a military man, because normal civilians don’t have to obey requests, or might just ignore you completely. Dad will always make things happen eventually because he’s a fixer, but it was Kyle who held the whole thing together; he was the glue. Even when things were getting fractious elsewhere, his relationship with Tolu held fast. He’s also highly organised and his ability to process a vast amount of information, accurately, is phenomenal. So while so much went wrong, I couldn’t have had a better team to make things right again. I can honestly say that without them this project wouldn’t have succeeded.
Presumably, because editors still didn’t think I’d complete it, even when I was approaching the 300-day point, they were still reluctant to commit man hours, time, money and column inches to the story. So Lucy Saunders came up with a plan to create renewed press attention by focusing more on the personal aspect of the Challenge. Most of the time, I turned up at a town, met some people, did a marathon and left. Hopefully, people in that town were inspired, but because I was living in my own bubble and always off to the next place, I didn’t really get an idea of how much it was affecting people. As a result of Lucy’s brainwave, we started a social media campaign, asking people to send in their experiences of the project and how it had inspired them. We were soon inundated, and their stories gave the project added depth, which in turn gave the press something to get their teeth into.
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Katie Russell, Ben’s biggest fan: The first time I met Ben was at the Bournemouth Marathon in 2015. I was supporting my mum, saw him running along with this big 401 flag on his back and we took a selfie together. But the first time we had a proper chat was when he came to Newbury on day 65. He was such a character, very kind, warm and friendly. And he made me feel like I wasn’t alone. When you end up in a dark place, it doesn’t matter how much your mum tells you you’re not the only one going through it, you still don’t quite believe it. But when Ben was talking about things that happened in his past, I was thinking: ‘Oh my God, that’s what I’m feeling right now. There’s actually someone else like me.’ It was the first time I’d felt like anybody had really understood me. That was such a nice feeling.
A few years ago, when I was 15, things got quite sour at school. No one should expect to be bullied, but if you can understand why it’s happening, you can at least rationalise it. But I couldn’t understand why they were making me feel like that. It started out with petty things. When they walked past they’d call me names. They’d stand around me in the corridor and make me feel really uncomfortable. The names got worse and suddenly even people who weren’t bullying me were pointing at me and talking. It just grew and grew. The lowest of my low points was when they sent letters to my house, full of horrific stuff about me and my family. I had health difficulties, psychosomatic issues to do with my back, which I believe stemmed from the bullying. It got to the point where I didn’t want to go to school anymore and I hardly left the house. And I thought to myself: ‘What’s the point in living?’ I couldn’t see any positives in my life. The only thing that kept me going was my family. But when you’re that low, you don’t even want your family to see you like that. You think: ‘They’d be better off without me.’
I’d had a lot of medical help and none of it really changed anything. I found it so hard to talk to anyone about it, because I didn’t want to face my emotions and break down. So I held it all in. But Ben was a far greater help than any counsellor had been. He didn’t know me, so he could have just said, ‘Sorry about that,’ and left it at that. But he listened and understood. He was able to say: ‘Yeah, I’ve been through that.’ It wasn’t that Ben advised me what to do, but I knew I wasn’t just talking to a blank wall. He wasn’t doing it because it was his job and he was getting paid to do it, he was doing it because he wanted to.
Running is a huge thing in my family. My mum, dad and brother have done so much running to raise money for charity and I’d always go and support them. But I never thought I would ever run because I had such a block in my head from the bullying. I just thought: ‘Why would I be able to do that?’ I just had no belief. When I met him for the first time, he said: ‘Are you going to come and run the last mile then?’ He said it like he was joking, but even so I said: ‘No chance.’ He did an assembly for some of the lower years at my school and I stood at the back and listened, and afterwards I thought: ‘Actually, why can’t I do that?’ So when it got to the last mile, I thought: ‘You know what? I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it…’
It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I still did it. The feeling was overwhelming. I was ecstatic, so proud. But at the same time, it was hard for me because I didn’t feel like I was allowed to be proud of myself. Even if I baked a cake and it turned out well, I didn’t feel like I could give myself credit. The bullies took that away from me. But now I’d run that last mile, I thought: ‘Why can’t I unblock other things in my head? Leaving the house, going into town, watching my brother play football again.’ It sounds like little things, but it was major stuff for me. It was overcoming little things like that that eventually got me to university. And it was Ben who changed my mindset.
Sarah Russell, Katie’s grateful mum: When I read why Ben was doing The 401 Challenge, I was like, ‘Oh my God, if there is anything I can do to support t
his chap, I’ve got to do it!’ I got in touch and ended up organising the run for him in Newbury. I got the school to do an assembly, for Years seven and eight – they ran around the school with him and then we went off and did the rest of it. I just really hit it off with him, struck up a friendship immediately. He was just such a genuine person, I don’t think I’d ever met anyone I’d felt so comfortable with.
From about the age of 11, Katie was getting a lot of pains in her back, and we were taking her to lots of places and basically nobody believed her, which triggered lots of issues. Eventually she had an MRI scan and they discovered she had ovarian cysts. But then she started getting bullied by kids at school, because they thought she was making things up as well. She had her operation and the pain went, but the bullying got worse, so she developed a psychosomatic disorder, which meant she was feeling real pain, even though the thing that was causing that pain had gone. I found it really hard to understand, I couldn’t get how something that was just in her mind could be real pain.
She used to do gymnastics, dancing, trampolining, but everything stopped. She wouldn’t exercise, wouldn’t do anything, because she didn’t have any confidence. She barely went to school for a year and barely left her room for three months. When I explained all this to Ben, he got it, because he’d been in her shoes. He explained how she was feeling, how she saw things, and that helped me understand her and how to deal with it. So many people have read the textbooks, but they don’t really understand. The medical world could learn loads from Ben, not least that everybody is different and you’ve got to treat them as individuals.
She came along that day in Newbury, with my mum and dad, to support Ben. They were driving around, and the next minute Katie got out of the car and said: ‘I’m gonna do a bit of running.’ I was like, ‘You’re what?!’ I don’t know what Ben said to her, but she ended up running a mile. She cried the whole way, but he ran with her and got her to the finish line. I ran with him about 10 times, and when he came back to Newbury, he came and stayed with us and Katie decided she wanted to run again. But just before, she got herself into a bit of a state, saying she didn’t think she could do it. Ben took her aside, had a little chat, and the next thing they appeared, hand in hand, and she ended up running something like three miles. I don’t know what he said, but whatever it was, it worked. That’s an incredible power to have, to be able to give somebody the belief that they can do something.