401

by Ben Smith

  I’m not going to sit here and claim I don’t wish for material things. It’s nice to have a nice car and a nice house, and wanting those things doesn’t make you a bad person. I want a nice car and a nice house one day, and I’d like to earn decent money, but not if it means changing who I am. The problem is when you start to change who you are and how you live your life because the love of material things starts to override everything else. That’s why money is not the be-all and end-all for me, because my happiness trumps everything. It’s good to have money, because it gives you plenty of opportunities to do certain things, especially in terms of building new projects. But I’m not going to do anything I don’t want to do, just to bring money in. That’s the difference.

  All the way through The 401 Challenge, people would say to me: ‘Are you going to write a book?’ And I’d say: ‘Why would I? I don’t read books, let alone write them.’ I thought it would be a bit hypocritical of me. But the more and more people asked, the more and more I started to think: ‘Maybe there’s something in this.’ I started to realise why they were asking, because the project had such a profound effect on people’s lives. Talking to people about my experiences has made me realise I’ve made a genuine difference. I have that realisation every day, therefore I’m happy. People often say to me: ‘It must be amazing to have your life.’ And I say: ‘You can, if you want it enough.’ I want people to feel what I feel, ignite lots of fires in lots of bellies.

  It might sound absurd, given that I’ve written a book, but I’ve never been one to dwell on the past. Would I have attempted The 401 Challenge if the things that happened to me as a kid hadn’t happened? Maybe, but probably not. I wouldn’t wish what I went through on anybody, and I’m certainly not grateful for it. I used to be angry with my parents for sending me to boarding school, but not anymore. The reality is it made me the person I am today. And maybe if those things hadn’t happened, I’d have ended up working in an office for the rest of my life and absolutely loving it. I don’t even regret the time I spent working in an office. The people I worked with in my previous careers were amazing and a lot of the skills I learnt there I now use in creating The 401 Foundation. I honestly believe that without that time I spent in my old jobs, I wouldn’t have been able to do what I’m doing now. You have to pluck the positives from everything. But if you’re not loving life – and the elephant in lots of living rooms across the land is happiness or contentment – it’s about changing the situation you find yourself in. It was me who decided I wasn’t going to let the past affect me anymore. It was me who decided to change and get the help I needed to do that. It was me who decided to get rid of the money and material things and figure out what made me happy. It was me who decided to start running, with some prompting from a friend. It was me who decided to do all of the things I did that brought me to the place I am now. Most people have the ability to do what they want, when they want to do it, but not many people do anything about it. If you live your life always thinking about ifs, buts and maybes, you’re not really living. None of that stuff matters, all that matters to me is that I’m now in a situation where I can make a change in people’s lives, and that’s a nice place to be.

  I don’t have the time to think about what life might have been like had I not rolled the dice. I don’t really have much emotional attachment to the past anymore, and I have no memory of the pain. It’s been washed away, it doesn’t even feel like it is a part of my life. While I was doing the Challenge, a few people from school got in touch to say: ‘Was I one of the bullies? If so, I’m really sorry.’ None of them were. But I honestly don’t think I’d be that bothered if I bumped into any of them. I don’t honestly know why they did what they did to me, whether it was low self-esteem or jealousy or whatever. But they’re so removed from my life now it’s irrelevant because I’ve dealt with what they put me through, run the anger out of me. It was running that allowed me to get rid of all my negative emotions. When I first started running, I was still affected by what had happened to me. I’d tried to flush it away, but it had started to bubble up again. But running gave me an outlet, allowed me to cut the ties to the past and drift off to a better place, where I could be me. I felt free, as if I didn’t have a care in the world. And the more I ran – and I ran quite a bit – the more time I had to file away all that shit that happened to me. I used to hear people talking about Zen and think it was a load of bollocks, but I now think there’s some truth in it, because I think I found it.

  It took blood, sweat and tears to complete The 401 Challenge, and there were lots of tough days. But there were also lots of phenomenal moments. It was like a therapeutic journey, instances from my life would suddenly come back to me – I’d be running in the Highlands and I’d have a memory of when I was at school. But the fact that those memories no longer had an adverse effect on me confirmed that I’d already dealt with them and changed as a person. I needed to have dealt with all that stuff before I started the Challenge, otherwise I would have been doing it for very different reasons, and probably for the wrong ones.

  Telling a story about the past and letting the past affect how you feel now are two different things. I don’t let my past define me, but I use my past in a positive way, to make a difference. People might say that I’m burying it, but that’s just nonsense: filing is very different to burying. I’ve come across a lot of amateur psychologists, well-meaning people, I hope, but people who assume they know more about me than myself. But I know me and I know what covering things up looks and feels like. People sometimes say to me: ‘Oh my God, you had such a tough childhood, that must really affect you?’ And I say: ‘No, it doesn’t.’ And they say: ‘Oh. Have you not dealt with it yet?’ And I’ll be thinking: ‘Yes, I really have!’

  ••••••••••

  Dan Smith, Ben’s brother: Bullying certainly affected me adversely, but because Ben was bullied far worse and for longer, it did him more damage. I played a lot of sport growing up, and when I decided to focus on rugby, my confidence grew. I left boarding school, went to a day school and was able to make a fresh start and forge my own identity. When I was 16, I got a rugby scholarship to a private school in Bristol, before signing for Bath Rugby, when I was 18. Meanwhile, Ben was struggling at university. I remember him unpacking his bags in Middlesbrough, and getting that same feeling in my gut as when he packed for boarding school. For most of our late teens and 20s, we lived very different lives. There were glimpses of our old relationship, but it just wasn’t the same. We didn’t really know how to be brothers any more. When I left Bath Rugby, I signed for Rotherham Titans and then Doncaster Knights, around the same time as Ben moved down to Bristol. If he needed me, I was there for him, but neither of us made much of an effort.

  When Ben came out as gay, he changed as a person. He became happier and more confident, and it was at that point that we tried to rebuild a relationship. When I heard he was going to run 401 marathons in 401 days, I thought: ‘You know what, he’ll do it. It’s so off the wall and no-one will expect him to complete it, so he will.’ He grew in confidence as the Challenge progressed, and I believe it was therapeutic and cathartic for him, and he exorcised some demons along the way. But it’s only recently that Ben and I have sat down and properly talked, and it’s Kyle and my beautiful wife Sarah that have helped bring us back together. Sarah is the most amazing woman I have ever known, has changed my life beyond recognition and challenged me to face my own demons. Kyle has done just the same for Ben. Ben and I have had brutally honest talks about the past, and this has transformed our relationship for the better. Through the support of Kyle and Sarah, I have got my big brother back, and Ben has got his little brother back, and I’m incredibly grateful.

  Recently, Sarah and I became parents to our beautiful boy Bob. He is the most incredible little man, the love we have for him can’t be put into words. And parenthood has made me appreciate just how great a job my mum and dad did, and continue to do. They didn’t get it right all the time, b
ut I can see now that everything they did for us was out of love. Thank you Mum and Dad, for everything.

  ••••••••••

  I used to fear what people would think if I opened up, but that’s changed. These days I have a different perspective on life, and I don’t really care what people think based on what I say about my past. Talking about stuff has become almost a compulsion, because look where not talking about stuff got me. I’ve now shared my story with people in the UK and around the world, most of them complete strangers, which is both weird and strangely liberating. You open yourself up to people and they either accept you or they don’t. As soon as you become comfortable with that, you can talk about almost anything. Not everybody is open to hearing about what happened to me. Some people want to stay in one place and live a rigid life, and don’t even want to hear about alternative possibilities. But I believe we’re in this world to experience as much as we can and interact with as many people as possible. Whatever your life looks like, that isn’t the way it has to be forever, just because it’s how it’s always been. It isn’t the way it has to be forever, just because that’s what you were taught from childhood. It isn’t the way it has to be forever, just because you’ve got a well-paid job and a family. Are you doing what you really want to do? Is doing what you’re doing making you happy or content? Really happy? Happy in your soul? As happy as you could be?

  That said, writing this book was always going to be a challenge because nobody has ever heard the full version in one go. But maybe this book was the final push I needed to clear up any lingering issues. Writing it dredged a few things up, things I thought had disappeared forever. The puzzle wasn’t complete, there were still bits jumbled up or missing, but the process was more cathartic than troubling. I wouldn’t go as far as to say there are bits of the old me left over, but certain things still affect me. There are things that frustrate me and make me nervous. Things still worry me, just in a different way. I get anxious about the Foundation because of a constant need to put myself under pressure and strive for perfection. Everything has to be done right first time, and the thought that something might not be gets my heart thumping through my chest again. No doubt that stems from my experiences at school, but at least now I’m channelling those feelings into something positive. If I hear that somebody has said something bad about me or I sense that they don’t quite get who I am, that stings. Before The 401 Festival of Running, we received a complaint from a local resident, who said she hoped it wouldn’t be a success and become an annual event because it would cause chaos for Portishead. That really got to me because I’d put my heart and soul into trying to do something positive for the community. It didn’t matter that we’d had literally thousands of positive comments, that one negative comment drowned everything else out. I hated the fact that she’d had that effect on me.

  Like most people, I get stressed when I have lots of stuff on my mind, and I still sometimes lack confidence and self-esteem. I’ll end up in situations, such as when I hid in the toilet at the Australian High Commission, where I was thinking: ‘I shouldn’t be here.’ I regress, feel like I used to, hiding from the bullies at school. Get me running and all my barriers come down; I’m as open as anything, will talk to anybody and just be me but stick me in a posh social function and I wither and die. I loved the fact I was invited to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace and the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street, but I find all the small talk that comes with those things a bit awkward.

  When I first started doing visits to very posh schools, I felt extremely uncomfortable because they reminded me of my school. It wasn’t the schools’ fault, I just had this feeling inside me that I wasn’t good enough to be there. My boarding school was a cruel environment, but I know it’s not anymore. After I finished The 401 Challenge, a radio station rang me up and said: ‘Could you come on the programme and talk about how much you’re against boarding schools?’ I said: ‘What makes you think I am?’ They just assumed I was. But a lot of boarding schools, including mine, have changed for the better and now have world-class pastoral care systems in place. Not all schools are like that. Sometimes, when kids move from primary to secondary school, their education stops being pastoral and holistic and becomes more focused on results. Nowadays, schools have to be run as businesses, I get that, but if that has a detrimental effect on kids’ confidence and self-esteem, it doesn’t really matter what grades they get, they’ll struggle in life. I wouldn’t send my kids to boarding school, but not because of what happened to me. Some kids thrive in that environment, but I’d just want my own at home with me. Then again, people always say, ‘I’d never do this, I’d never do that’, but it’s not always that simple. Parents want what’s best for their kids, but circumstances change, just as my parents’ circumstances changed.

  Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think: ‘My God, everything’s going so well – when am I going to get the call or text or email telling me it’s all gone to shit again?!’ But even that’s part of the joy of where I am in my life right now. I’m trying to create new things all the time, which is fun and exciting, but also means lots of things will go wrong. But failure is a privilege of those who try. Life doesn’t always go to plan, and the true test of your character and personality is how you react when that happens. I’ve already proved to myself that when things get tough – at school, at university, during my marriage and divorce, during The 401 Challenge – I can manage. And having battled through all that darkness, nothing can ever be as bad again.

  There were a lot of times during The 401 Challenge when I thought: ‘What on earth am I doing?’ But the project was like one gigantic tribute to the thing that made everything possible. Five years ago, my life was this murky mess. Running was like a purifying tablet: as soon as it was dropped into the mix, things started to become clearer. Eventually, I ran so much, all the murkiness was gone. And that’s what I wanted other people to experience. The fact I’m not a professional athlete carried weight. I still honestly don’t know if there’s anything special about me or not. Maybe I do have the gift of stubbornness or persistence, but I still had to go looking for them. And if you do take the view that what I did was special, then by extension everybody has something special inside of them, because I’m still just a normal bloke.

  The moment you find that thing that makes you happy or content, everything else falls into place. I tell kids that the most important thing in life is finding inner happiness, not just in the head, but also in the heart. Too many of us are ruled by the head and don’t listen to our hearts enough. There are so many metaphors I could use for how running was the key to my contentment. As well as a purifying tablet, it was like my WD-40. I’d been rusting away, but running freed things up again. For so long, I thought that almost everybody was bad and out to get me. But running, and by extension, The 401 Challenge, made me realise that most people are essentially good. Running made me realise that anything is possible. Things we haven’t done, we just haven’t figured out how to do them yet. Running gave me the confidence to be who I truly am and live the life I wanted to live. Your gifts might be different to mine and you might not fancy running 401 marathons in 401 days but there will be a song inside you, if only you look.

  Photos

  Me aged three, at home in Germany, waiting for Father Christmas.

  With fellow runners in the USA during my seven marathons in seven days challenge, in preparation for The 401 Challenge.

  Florence the campervan in all her glory!

  Caught in the middle of Marathon 210 – so happy that I found a cider stop!

  Marathon 341 in Pontefract – jumping for joy!

  Marathon 21 – just reached Land’s End.

  Me, Kyle and Hiten Vora (Children In Need) at the Virgin London Marathon 2017. This was also Kyle’s first ever marathon!

  The first 401 Festival of Running held on the August bank holiday weekend in 2017, to raise funds for The 401 Foundation.

  Marathon 355 – in Bango
r, scared at the feat that lies before me!

  Me and Nick during the official Bournemouth Marathon in 2016 (Marathon 398). This was my fastest marathon in the Challenge (3 hours, 55 minutes). There was an amazing crowd and atmosphere.

  In Holyhead for Marathon 356, feeling like I’m on top of the world.

  With Chris Evans and Vassos Alexander after my interview on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2, April 2016.

  Marathon 83 in High Wycombe – getting the calories in for breakfast!

  Kyle’s mum and dad, Pat and Colin, at my final marathon. This was Pat’s first marathon and Colin’s 31st marathon.

  Marathon 82 in Aylesbury with Mandy Newton on her first 5k after her accident.

  Enduring a dry needling session at JamPhysio after Marathon 284, after temporarily pausing the Challenge – part of how physiotherapist Jamie Murphy restored me back to health in just five days.

  My mum and dad, Bev and Pete, at Dad’s 60th birthday party.

  With Jamie from JamPhysio – this incredible man saved me and the Challenge!