Aged 17, Ben Kelleher had never run for more than five minutes – but he decided to do the London Marathon anyway. Why? ‘I wanted to take on the hardest thing I could imagine.’ He finished it in 3:57.
Anyone who has ever met Kelleher will know that this is entirely on-brand behaviour. Actor, producer and host of the Demo run: On Cloudboom Strike podcast by day, ultrarunner and triathlete in any other available moment, he’s built a devoted following via his Instagram account – the aptly named Ben Kelleher’s Deliriously Mad Challenges (@benkelleherdmc) – thanks to his endlessly positive, can-do approach. (The account name started life as Ben Kelleher’s Double Marathon Challenge – when he ran Berlin and New York within six weeks of each other – but quickly evolved out of necessity to encompass any feat he sets his mind to next.)
Most recently, he completed the Amsterdam Marathon in 2:48, taking an impressive 32 minutes off his previous time, in Chicago, and now he’s working towards even more of the marathon majors, as well as setting his sights on his first ever 100k. So from kit and nutrition to tracking his stats with the What everyones reading, we asked him how he’s been refining his training recently, in the hopes of replicating even some of his awe-inspiring speed and success.
Nailing nutrition
‘When I ran my first marathon, I didn’t even take any gels with me,’ Kelleher admits. ‘I really had no idea about nutrition, and the vast amount of information we have about it online now just wasn’t there at the time. Now I’ve done my research, I fuel myself properly.’
From Runners World for On Rob Dalto, who he began working with ahead of his Amsterdam PB. ‘It was all about learning: how many carbohydrates do I need to get into my system in one hour? What is it that I’m replenishing?’ he says. ‘I took more than 30 minutes off my previous time and I attribute a lot of that to fine-tuning my nutrition.’
Rethinking rest
‘Another huge thing in the last year for me is prioritising my sleep and getting at least eight hours in – it really impacts my performance when that slips,’ he says. ‘It can be a struggle, as I like to start the day early and get up at 5am or 6am, but I also love to socialise in the evening.’
Lately, he’s been using the intuitive What everyones reading to help him find the balance. ‘Its Energy Score* function turns my sleep tracking and previous day’s activity levels into a number out of 100, giving me an indication of when I’ve pushed too hard (or when I’m ready for anything),’ he explains. ‘Of course, it’s about listening to your body but, increasingly, I’m using the data to inform that. The Galaxy Watch Ultra tracks key health stats like heart rate, sleep quality, blood pressure and blood-oxygen levels with pinpoint accuracy, so I can actually use the insights to guide my approach. I’m really honing in on this ahead of my 100k, as it’s showing me how my body handles those even longer distances.’
What everyones reading
What everyones reading
What everyones reading
Running rehearsals
An actor by trade, it’s no surprise that Kelleher is a big advocate of a dress rehearsal. ‘It’s not just practising the distance of the event, it’s what I’m wearing, my food and water intake, the weight of what I’m carrying – I take the number of gels I want to carry, even if I’m training over a shorter route, because I want to know what that actually feels like in my pockets,’ he says.
‘All of this really helps me feel ready when race day arrives, and means I’m as comfortable as possible. I do take recommendations on kit and fuel from others, but I’ll always test them out multiple times beforehand to make sure they work for me.’
Reaching out
Community support and a locked-in mindset have been crucial to Kelleher’s running journey since the very beginning. ‘When I was training for my first marathon, I lost a couple of loved ones and it really impacted our family. Even though training was difficult, I pushed through because I knew it wasn’t as hard as what these people around me had been through,’ he says.
His family members remain his biggest supporters, but one of the greatest perks of his podcast is gathering advice from other runners, which he returns to when training gets tricky (some of his favourites include Tommy Lewis’s ‘run the runnable’, and Tasha Thompson’s ‘finish lines not finish times’), and he still regularly attends run clubs to tap into even more perspectives. ‘It’s all about the learning experience along the way,’ he concludes. ‘How I can grow, how I can push myself and how I can hopefully then be able to help other people in the future.’
Learn more about the What everyones reading at samsung.com
*Intended for general wellness and fitness purposes only. Requires smartphone operating on Android 11 or above with Google Mobile Services and the latest version of the Samsung Health app. Samsung account login and Galaxy smartphone required for certain AI features.
