401

by Ben Smith

  Allison Curbishley: We brought Ben up to Steve’s training camp in Kielder, Northumberland, to give a talk. There were about 80–90 people in the room, ranging from very good club runners to Olympians, like Laura Weightman and Ross Murray. You could have heard a pin drop for an hour, people were hanging on his every word. That’s a real skill, there aren’t many people like that you come across in life. When he came down to our race, the Worcester City Run, he was treated like a superstar, especially by the women, they were flocking to him. Kyle thinks it’s because they don’t feel threatened, but I think it’s the reverse, that they’re walking away thinking: ‘What a waste…’

  Within the running community he has nothing but the utmost respect. Even when Ben met Laura and Ross, they were in awe of his achievements. When I introduced him to Paula [Radcliffe], Ben couldn’t quite believe that she wanted to meet him. But Paula or Mo Farah, or any elite athlete, could never do what Ben did. But as soon as he finished the Challenge, the last thing he wanted to do was put his trainers on again and go for a run. You could see him spiralling down into this depression and thinking: ‘What do I do now? What am I about?’ He needs a major project in his life, something to plan and build from scratch, which is why I’m so glad to see him putting all his efforts into his Foundation and motivational speaking. He’s found something that he’s very good at, makes him happy and a lot of other people happy. But I don’t think The 401 Challenge will be the last in his life, this is just the beginning for Ben.

  You’re on this planet for such a short speck of time, and I’d love to be able to leave it having touched as many people as Ben. To make a difference in the way that he has would be immense. I’ve made a very good friend who has hammered home the importance of living life honestly and being true to yourself. I feel so lucky to have met him. If I’m ever feeling down and I need somebody to make me laugh and tell me how it is, I’ll give him a ring.

  ••••••••••

  It was nice to know that I’d made a difference, but five or six months after finishing the Challenge, I didn’t have a job, and was thinking: ‘Shit, I really need to find some money, because if I don’t, I can’t live.’ It wasn’t as if I suddenly had endorsement deals or anything. People did ask, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to do them, and why would I endorse something I’d never used or worn? There were a lot of people who wanted to use me, which I got quite angry about. That’s why Kyle became my manager, because he knows me better than anyone in the world and I trust him more than anyone in the world.

  We work well as a team and he’s the person who stops people taking the piss, because some people do try to. I have to charge for school visits, because I have to make a living. But I get people saying: ‘We can’t pay your expenses or travel, and can you do it for a big discount because we’re only a small school.’ And Kyle has to say: ‘No, we can’t. You either want to hear his story or you don’t.’ That was difficult at first, because we didn’t want to sound rude or uppity. But I soon realised that I was being paid for an hour of my time, paid for my life experiences. We don’t live a luxurious life, but it was about recognising my own worth.

  I’ve also started doing corporate talks, and they’re interested for the same reasons as schools. There’s this huge push in ‘growth mindset’ in corporate environments, which is basically the idea that intelligence can develop and effort leads to success. Companies are also interested in the idea of marginal gains and are constantly having to re-format their cultures, introduce new visions, new values, new goals, new strategies. I often get brought in to show their employees you can change the way you think and do things, even things you’ve been doing for your entire life. In other words, old dogs can learn new tricks. And doing things differently can have a positive effect. When employees hear somebody talking about all the shit they’ve been through in their lives and how they’ve managed to turn things around, that can change the way they think about how they function in a work environment. I cover so many different bases, and we’re very clear that it’s not necessarily about giving the client what they want. Sometimes a client doesn’t even know what they want. But I’m very happy to say, touch wood, we have never had a negative corporate or school visit, and I’ve done 20-odd of the former and over 200 of the latter (101 of them during The 401 Challenge).

  I just stand up there and bear my soul. People don’t really do that and it’s quite shocking for some of my audience. You might view the way I do things as winging it, but I prefer to keep things free and open, which is actually a difficult skill, or so I’ve been told, because there’s nothing to hang onto. I know my life, and I can just pull it out when needed. I can relate to an audience better when I can keep an eye on them, and switch it up or down if need be. When I was pretending to be something I wasn’t, a lot of my energy was focused on putting a face on, being something other people expected or wanted me to be. That affected a lot of things, including my ability to talk in front of people. I wouldn’t have been able to talk to big groups five years ago, but the moment I accepted myself, and became happy, the confidence came, the self-esteem came, and getting up and talking to people, being open and honest, became quite empowering. I wasn’t acting anymore or hiding anything, so I actually enjoy getting up on a stage and bearing my soul – it is a privilege to share my life with people.

  One thing I’ve learnt is that while there is a natural human desire to solve people’s problems, they have to do it themselves. We all want to help and give advice – ‘stop doing that, this is what you should do instead’ – and after the 401, I did believe I could do almost anything. But it might not be the right help and advice for that particular person, even if it was right for you. Ultimately, you don’t really know what’s going on in somebody’s head unless they tell you, no matter how well you think you know them. During the 401, I met some people who seemed exactly like me five years ago. And people would contact me all the time, thinking I might be able to sort their lives out.

  Some of the messages we had throughout the Challenge were horrific. We had parents sending us pictures of their kids that had self-harmed or been beaten up. Or they’d tell us that their son or daughter wanted to commit suicide, thinking we’d be able to do something about it. Initially, you have this outpouring of love and want to help. You end up having these deep but shallow conversations with people at the same time. You want to tell them it will get better, but you have no idea if it will. I don’t know what anybody could have said to me at school to improve my situation. The only thing that might have changed things is if Mum and Dad had removed me. All you can hope to be is a positive example. The moment you get involved in the mechanics and nitty-gritty of a particular person’s problem, that’s when you end up sucking your own soul dry, and you don’t have any strength left to help anyone. Throughout The 401 Challenge, I had to reserve as much as I could, and it was up to Kyle and the rest of the team to shelter me from a lot of that stuff. I’m not a qualified counsellor, and just because I might have been through a similar situation doesn’t mean I’m qualified to be able to deal with things like that. I could potentially be doling out the wrong advice, and something might go badly wrong.

  During The 401 Challenge, I came to realise that people felt they got to know me almost personally. We had 40,000 people following us on Facebook, and if every single one of them had come to us with a problem, because they thought we had a personal relationship, I wouldn’t have had time to do anything else. There were people who got quite irate about us not answering quickly, which was difficult to handle. It’s nice to think that people found a measure of security or pleasure or solidarity in following my story, but there had to be a realistic expectation about how much I could give back. You want to help everybody out, but you can’t. If you try, you end up killing yourself, and then you can’t help anybody. That was one of the major reasons we decided to create The 401 Foundation.

  We wanted to give back, and wanted to make a difference, but we couldn’t d
o it one person at a time, we had to do it on a bigger scale. We’d discussed the idea of a 401 Foundation before, during the Challenge, but only in vague terms. The plan was to award grants to grassroots organisations and projects that focus on building confidence and self-esteem, but also tackle mental health and self-development issues. As I travelled the UK before and during the Challenge, I found a lot of communities who knew their own people better than the bigger charities did, but didn’t have the money to make a difference at a local level. Not all charities are detached and impersonal, and naturally the bigger a charity gets, the more people it can help. But because government and big donors pour most of their money into those bigger charities, a lot of smaller, grassroots projects don’t get a look-in. I didn’t want that to be the case anymore, because I’ve seen first-hand how small community projects affect people in such a positive way.

  During the Challenge, Scunthorpe turned out to be the biggest day, in terms of the amount of people who turned out, apart from day 401. Scunthorpe & District Athletics Club organised a pit stop at a great coffee shop, called Café Indie. It was set up by a guy who only recruited people with criminal records or mental health issues or who just couldn’t get a job they really wanted. That co-operative environment built confidence in people and instilled a sense of self-worth in them. People would think: ‘You know what? I might have all this shit in my past, but somebody has given me a chance, and now I have the ability to get another job and be a functioning member of society’. During my pit stop, I learned that the owner’s success was also his problem, because staff would get new jobs all the time, having been given a new lease of life at the café. It was a small project but it was powerful, exactly the sort of thing we wanted to support. I don’t believe it’s right that if somebody has a great idea and wants to make a positive change to their community, it might fail because of a lack of money. So we wanted to be able to help these inspirational individuals. We’re not going to be able to help everybody, and our grants will be between £3000–5000. But, hopefully, fingers crossed, if our financial plan for the next 10 years is accurate, we’ll be able to hand out £2–3m in grants every year.

  To make sure The 401 Foundation delivers what it says on the tin, we also developed an events company. I know only too well the links between running and improved mental health, so our running events are designed to build people’s confidence and self-esteem. The 401 Challenge, plus The 401 Foundation, plus the events company, are all linked by this fundamental idea of trying to help people feel better about themselves.

  The first event, The 401 Festival of Running, took place in Portishead in August 2017. It was a family festival of running, music and food, designed to inspire people to do things they never thought they could. There were races for kids, great bands, street-food vans, and people could do a 5k run, a 10k run or a half-marathon as part of the Festival Challenge. It was everything we wanted it to be, in terms of inclusivity and all the finer details we put into it. We had about 3000 people turn up over the two days and the feedback was immense. People loved the medals we gave out, how beautiful the location was, how supportive the locals were and how well it was organised. I was particularly pleased that they appreciated the little touches, like the mini-buses we put on to ferry people from the car park to the events village. We’ll definitely be doing it again in 2018, and we hope to make it an annual fixture. The plan is to take the idea across the country – to Scotland, Wales, the North, the South-East – and hopefully, a couple of years down the line, we’ll add a marathon option. In a few years, we will launch a unique running experience that will give people the chance to have their own 401 adventure. Watch this space.

  When The 401 Festival of Running was over, I didn’t really feel relieved, because it was a case of, ‘Right, that’s done, on to the next thing…’ That’s how my life is at the moment, there’s never an oppor­tunity to sit down and consolidate or congratulate myself on a job well done. The irony is, I’ve never been more challenged since I finished The 401 Challenge. We’re building a brand, which will be hard work, but I’m doing something I have a huge passion for, something that makes me happy. I’m looking forward to the next five years immensely, but I would like a little less chaos. We have an amazing board, including the chairman, Shaun Tymon, and Claude Knights, the former CEO of Kidscape. I met Shaun in Scarborough and we have become very close since, and he and the rest of our fantastic board members, including Andy Acton and Colette Fletcher, share a passion for making people’s lives better. But the day-to-day running of the charity is basically all done by me. A lot of people say they’d like to help, but don’t deliver when it comes to the crunch. They’ll say stuff like: ‘Let me know when you’re ready to launch the Foundation.’ I’ll ring them and they’ll say: ‘Oh yeah, about that…’ Kyle manages me, but I’m dealing with lawyers, the charity commission, councils and organising events. We have partners – companies like TrueStart Coffee, Virtual Runner UK, Nicework and EtchRock that have been with us since the start – but I have nobody working with me, and I don’t make any money from The 401 Foundation. My salary comes from the various talks that I give.

  ••••••••••

  Shaun Tymon, chairman of The 401 Foundation: I first met Ben on his second visit to Scarborough during the Challenge, in May 2016, when I ran the first of three marathons with him. I suggested he come and speak at my company’s staff conference at the end of the year, which he did, and he was as inspirational as I hoped he would be. We had 260 staff, ranging from builders to accountants to solicitors, and all of them were absolutely spellbound. I think his story resonated with so many of them, because most people have felt really low at some point in their lives and wanted to make changes, if not everyone.

  He was staying with me, so I also got him to visit some schools in the Scarborough area. And although he chopped and changed his talks, there was one phrase he always used: ‘Find something that makes you happy and do it every day’. I was in a bit of a dark place at the time, but I spoke to him about the problems I was having and things started to make sense. Then when he asked me to be treasurer of The 401 Foundation, that gave me a massive boost.

  I’m not one for overstating things, but Ben has changed my life, no doubt about it. I’ve been an accountant since 1988, and accountants don’t tend to make radical changes. But he made me think: ‘What am I doing? Why not do something you want to do?’ So I decided to take early retirement. Instead of fighting to get to the light at the end of the tunnel, Ben made me realise that I could dig myself out of the tunnel early. It was scary at first, but I’m now picking up some consultancy work, and Ben has asked me to be the chairman of The 401 Foundation, which is a dream come true. I don’t get paid for it, and it takes up a lot of my time, but that’s exactly what I want, because it’s so exciting. Ben made me realise that if you’re really passionate about something, don’t wait any longer, go out and do it. Not everybody can change their circumstances completely, but almost everybody can do something that makes them happier.

  When you’ve got someone like Ben on your side, you think you can do anything, even if you might not be sure how. I had doubts about The 401 Festival of Running, from a financial point of view, but in the end I said to Ben: ‘If you think it will work, I believe it will.’ And, of course, it did. Which is why I think The 401 Foundation will develop into the go-to charity for self-esteem and mental health issues in the UK. We need to generate some serious cash, and that will depend on Ben’s profile. But he just has this ability to take people with him on his journey. It’s a special talent.

  ••••••••••

  We have plans to raise £100,000 in early 2018, through crowdfunding and Kyle is going to throw his support behind that. We will also be looking for philanthropic investment, and the aim is to become sustainable as a charity within the next two years. But crowdfunding and philanthropic investment is not going to be enough. So, the only thing for it was to start planning another challenge fo
r 2020. Well, you didn’t think I’d fall out of love with running forever? And, thankfully, The 401 Challenge didn’t do any lasting physical damage, or at least nothing my chiropractor Dr. Tom Scourfield can’t resolve with his magic hands. The goal is to raise more than £1m, but this time to take the challenge global. We are in the early stages of planning and will be revealing all the details very soon. But trust me, it will be worth the wait. If you thought The 401 Challenge was big, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

  I like the fact that The 401 Challenge had nothing to do with trying to break records or anything material, it meant there was more focus on the causes I was running for. A lot of what we learnt during The 401 – about logistics, strategy, communication – will be ploughed back into our next challenge and The 401 Foundation. Hopefully, this time the planning will run smoother, although we’ll have the twin tasks of raising money for The 401 Foundation while keeping our UK audience engaged. We are planning to push the boundaries of not only endurance, but also technology, offering a direct link between the Challenge and thousands of schools throughout the UK. We’re looking to be really innovative.

  I still have sleepless nights, but only because my mind is so busy, thinking of all these different ideas. In 2018, we will be building The 401 Foundation team, along with all the structures required to make sure the charity’s future, and the future of others, is secure.

  ••••••••••

  Harry Stow, a friend for life: I was fortunate enough to be in the audience when Ben picked up the Helen Rollason Award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and I thought: ‘Wow, this guy is incredible.’ I’m gay, and when he finished his speech by saying, ‘I’m not afraid anymore’, that was a really powerful moment, because I remember feeling afraid when I first realised who I really was. I work for a county sports partnership in Hampshire, but I used to wonder if I’d always be seen as inferior within the world of sport, if people knew who I really was. But Ben made me feel like I could achieve anything.