'See you tomorrow!' I just about registered my mother’s words as I began to settle into my stride. They say only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, but I found myself doing exactly that in the 33°C heat of mid-July 2019. Although not exactly iconic, the scenery was pretty enough as I ran past the playgrounds and ploughed fields of Hornchurch Country Park on the eastern edge of London. Five and a half steady miles later, I arrived at the finish line to be greeted with some electrolyte-infused water and a triumphant beep from the timing system.
Mission accomplished? Not even close. This was the Spitfire Scramble 24-hour race and, unlike the eight-person relay teams, I was flying solo. My objective that day, night and the following morning was simple, yet utterly daunting: to run a hundred miles... in one go... without stopping... or sleeping. I was determined to endure lap after gruelling lap to join the ranks of ultrarunning centurions.
I’d spent around four years getting myself increasingly hooked on running – from a complete novice just about making it round the block to a fairly respectable sub-4:00 London Marathon debut within two years. For around a year, I revelled in the kind of PB purple patch that often follows that first serious marathon training block, but after taking half an hour off my time in Brighton, I decided that the intensity of spending months striving to peak for one day and shave a few further seconds wasn’t worth the nerve-shredding weeks of taper tantrums. So my next running year took me from 50K to 100K, and then to this balmy (barmy?) summer’s day.
How to avoid hitting the wall during a marathon ultras really does take the pressure off. When you go further, no one asks how long it took – most just express a mixture of respect and concern for your sanity. Especially at my mid-pack amateur level, there’s no expectation to run remotely quickly. You can – and should – eat a lot, too: 100 miles will burn you an extra 10,000 calories and it’s impossible to consume too much along the way. Trust me, I’ve tried.
But in my experience, every long run presents a unique set of challenges, and this race was hot. Dunking my T-shirt in a bucket of water every lap until dusk helped considerably, even if the T-shirt was dry again by halfway. At some point during the night, I was asked by a passing runner how I was feeling. All I could manage was, ‘F*****,’ but I kept going, spurred on by the convergence of the end of the race and a tantalisingly close target. By the time I staggered towards the home straight on my 18th lap, I had 50 minutes to spare, but after 102 miles, there was no way I was going out for another. So I took everyone by surprise – including the welcome party of fellow club members gathered to run me in – with a sprint finish that left them all trailing in my dust. To this day, I’m not sure how my battered legs found the speed, but I do remember my mum standing at the finish line with open arms and a beaming smile on her face. All the pain disappeared as we shared the most euphoric yet gentle embrace. You see, she wasn’t very well.
Two months later, on a cooler September midweek morning, my brother Jon and I arrived at Rutland Water and walked to the start line in a mournful contemplative silence. We were 10 days late for the official marathon, having dropped everything to see Mum in hospital. Jill Dye chose the ordeal of surgery and a couple more weeks to see her family again over the comfort of palliative care before bowel cancer took her life. So it seemed the most fitting tribute to put ourselves through the mill in her enduring memory. We didn’t say much along the way, but having fallen off the ultra-training wagon, it was definitely hard work.
It’s strange how possible it is to run, even when emotions are at their most extreme. We were both choking back the tears in Rutland, but at no point did that affect our running gait or ability to keep going. Similarly, with the wave of depression that accompanied the onset of winter as I found myself committed to a run streak that would last seven weeks until the new year brought it to a close. No matter how little I made of the rest of the day, that run was at least something undeniably achieved. So many people run for so many reasons. But in that bleak midwinter, running was therapy, a reason to make it out the door, and I’d go so far as to call it my salvation.
Through the turbulence of 2020 and a pandemic spent living alone, running became a constant companion in the face of my uneasy isolation. Catching Covid left a lingering fatigue that took months to lift. But as 2021 dawned, so did my golden age. Conventional wisdom has it that consistency is key, and so it proved to be. I set PBs at every distance from 5K to 50K, won an eight-hour loop race and completed the 102-mile Beacons Way Ultra on the way to logging over 3,000 miles for the year. I had fallen so deeply in love with this beautiful sport that I treated it to a romantic holiday, with a fast-packing trip along the Pennine Way. When shinsplints cut our honeymoon short six days and 160 miles in, I wasn’t angry, just disappointed that my legs would have to spend a couple of weeks on ice.
A creeping shadow
With some patient rest and rehab, my shins recovered and, before long, I was back to full power. But ever so gradually, running became harder and each mile took that little bit longer to get through. Not exactly lung-busting, but it felt like my engine was making unusual grinding noises, with a load of amber lights on the dashboard, and I just couldn’t find fifth gear. This was despite trying everything to keep progressing. I hired a coach to help me integrate strides, speedwork and strength training Will records crumble at the 2024 London Marathon easy miles. I cut down on side-hustle work in order to rest enough. I stopped drinking and was already one of those whole-food, plant-based types. I even supplemented with beetroot. Looking back, I’d never been leaner, stronger or fitter.
But still I grew ever slower and more exhausted. I put it down to all sorts of things. Too much rest (or the opposite?), not enough sleep, a stressful teaching job, always catching colds from the kids, an overcommitted extra curricular schedule. I’d reached my mid-thirties – had I simply passed my peak? By the spring of 2022, I still didn’t have any answers. But with the benefit of hindsight, it was blindingly obvious that I’d been asking all the wrong questions.
In my defence, these are the questions that in polite British society we just don’t ask, even under our collective breath. Is there a problem with the way I’m pooing? Stereotypes about distance runners and vegans are definitely true in my case. The high-fibre diet leads to more regular toilet trips and we’ve all been caught out once or twice while running. So, I thought nothing of having to wait three hours after eating to run, then four, just to be safe. And I found myself planning in places to stop en route, even if I wasn’t going out for long. By summer, I was experiencing days at a time of intense stomach pain that would cause me to stop mid-run and let a wave pass. I put this down to stress.
In August, a family reunion took me to America and the excuse for a road trip all over the States with Jon and his young family. Things were getting worse and worse by this point and I still remember the bewildered expressions as I stopped the car for more pit stops than my six-year-old niece. The long days on the road gave me plenty time to think about the ever-more-worrying symptoms that were starting to include blood and pencil thin strings of poo. We kept on trucking from the trail runner’s playground of the Colorado Rockies to the picturesque Pacific Northwest before taking in the stunning beauty of Lake Tahoe on the California/Nevada boarder. Trotting along a deserted but breathtakingly scenic stretch of the rim trail, I somehow found the words to confide in my brother that there was a chance I was in the same position as our mother had been. My extensive googling suggested that cancer was the least likely of about four digestive conditions, but nonetheless I promised him I’d see a doctor when I got home. Mum hadn’t told us about any of these symptoms, she was just so incredibly stoic.
But of course, being an ultrarunner, I had to get at least one race in before leaving the mountains and signed up for a 50K around the Colorado ski resort of Steamboat Springs. Humbled by the altitude, I didn’t make easy work of the first eight miles uphill or, for that matter, the long high plateau or knee-crunching descent back to base. But as with the 40-mile Warwickshire Bear a few weeks later, I found a way to finish, even if that meant frequently wandering off the path to examine the bushes.
‘Are you sure about all these races?’ enquired Coach Jason. He had a point – this running thing was becoming harder and harder. After a load of unproductive training and a couple of ultras to recover from, anyone would have advised me to rest. But in mid-October (a month after the Bear) there was one more race in my diary: The Centurion Autumn 100. Surely I had another 100-miler in me? And it was more than curiosity that pushed me to yet another start line. Having contacted my GP the day I returned from holiday, a set of concerning results from blood and FIT tests led to the booking of a colonoscopy for the Tuesday after race weekend. If this was serious, the Autumn 100 might be my last big adventure for a while. I had to at least have a go.
By race day, the presence of blood in my stool was no longer ambiguous and I was feeling the kind of fatigue that comes with a lack of iron. Not that I could do much about this as I had to follow a strict ‘low residue’ diet pre-appointment. However, I spied sugar syrup on the list of prescribed foods, so energy gels were my primary form of sustenance for the next 22 hours and 23 minutes as I trudged along the Thames Path and Ridgeway. My third hundred was conspicuous in that there wasn’t really anything to report. Thankfully, there wasn’t too much stomach trouble, another one ticked off and a nice shiny belt buckle for my trouble!
Body blow
Perhaps it’s understandable that this race fades into insignificance compared to its immediate aftermath. Unable to reach for my usual vegan protein recovery sources, I had to make do with croissants and plain white rice. Fasting and teaching the next day was about as pleasant as the ‘bowel prep’ that clears out your insides. Still depleted by around 10,000 calories, I was already a bit spaced-out by the time I was sedated for the colonoscopy. There was a big screen and, in a strange kind of daze, I thought I saw something being snipped. Were they taking a biopsy? I was definitely awake by the time I was offered biscuits and hurriedly worked my way through the six custard creams which were without doubt the most delicious meal of my short life.
Following the eventual diagnosis of metastatic bowel cancer and associated bleak prognosis, there’s a good chance that first post-fast biscuit won’t be topped. The primary tumour had spread to my liver and lymph nodes in my neck. I was informed that for the average stage four (as I was) patient has a 50/50 chance of surviving a year and around one in ten will be alive after five. There are many ways to come to terms with this life-shattering news. But of course, I ran home from hospital the day I found out. And about a month later, in November, traversed the hilly and muddy Cotswolds with Jon at the Broadway Marathon. Neither of us dared say aloud that it might be our last long run together, but the emotions flowed at the finish line. It didn’t matter one bit that I’d slowed us to the point that we were bringing up the rear.
December 2022 failed to bring glad tidings and I received the unwanted gift of chemotherapy just in time for my 37th birthday. Chemo hit me like a train. Even on the good days when I made it out of bed, running was rendered impossible by peripheral neuropathy: intense pins and needles in the hands, feet and throat. The new year didn’t bring the impetus to join a gym or anything remotely optimistic. The future stretched as far as getting through each day and dealing with the crescendo of abdominal pain that resulted in emergency open surgery for a bowel obstruction. It took me a week to at least physically recover from the trauma and a day before discharge, I attempted the slowest of shuffles around a busy hospital ward, gingerly clinging on to my new colostomy bag. It was worth being told off by a bemused nurse to feel that running motion again.
Weeks of recovery from the ordeal of major surgery turned to months as I tried to come to terms with being a shadow of my former self, still playing host to four tumours in two places. Running again felt like an awkwardly reconvened relationship – seeking to find that long lost spark of magic but with rose-tinted memories (and years of data) reminding me that things ain’t what they used to be. The lingering fatigue of chemo made me slow and easy to tire and that was without the need to stop and change leaking bags and deal with a bleeding stoma. Rolling hills were like mountains and anything more strenuous than an easy plod was now an unsustainable all-out sprint.
So the road back to running fitness was a rocky one, but there was no question of whether to resume: absence really does make the heart grow fonder. A jog on the treadmill that Jon constructed while I was in hospital turned to something resembling a run and enough miles for it to be worth venturing outside. Chemo on hold and neuropathy gone, I ran out of excuses not to commit to training again. It took me four months of slowly escalating weekly mileage to complete another ultra with 50km in a local loop race. I was a couple of hours slower than my course PB but for once I didn’t care at all. Because I was an ultrarunner again.
I was prepared for this to be the extent of my comeback as the prospect of more chemo loomed large. But I found myself emerging from a procession of six-weekly post-scan appointments in which I was essentially told to go forth and live a little more until the next. For me, this meant running further and when the vanishingly rare opportunity of the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc presented itself, I felt a tingle of nervous excitement in my toes – the feeling that comes from committing to a race you’re not certain to finish. This ‘Superbowl of ultrarunning’ circumnavigates Mont Blanc, with 106 miles of alpine up and down. Cut-off times tell you a lot about an ultra – this one allows 46 1/2 hours.
I embarked on an escalation in training intensity and specificity that could have made a Rocky style montage with trips to Yorkshire, Snowdonia, Spain and two thirds of the UTMB course itself. A knee injury from an innocuous tumble added a good deal of pain, especially to the descents, but by the time crossed I the start line in Chamonix in September 2023, I was as prepared for the challenge as I’d ever be.
I gave it my all but sadly, that wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. Despite battling through 98km in 24 hours, I missed the Arnouva cut-off by five minutes. It was my first DNF and I didn’t take it well. Adding salt to the emotional wounds and my tears of disappointment, I struggled to look Jon in the eye as he found me mid-race in a hotel room and not crossing the finish line. The tears continued to flow as it dawned on me that I’d turned UTMB into a proxy war with cancer and I’d well and truly lost. This was the first time my dwindling hearth had really limited me and, more than at any point since diagnosis, I felt like a dying man.
Turn of the century
Within 24 hours of this heroic failure, I promised myself that my ultrarunning journey could and would not end there. Certain of my underlying ambition to once again run 100 miles, I began to hatch a plan. If all that had defeated me was an arbitrary time limit, was there anything to stop me from going the distance, but outside a race? I looked up the Essex Way… 81 miles to Epping… and London is about another 20? Yes it is. My next appointment provided me with a strange sense of impetus. Cancer had now spread to my lungs, but as the other tumours were barely growing, I had a potential wellness window of at least three months.
I set about planning the logistics of a point-to-point run through a whole county, eventually choosing the last weekend of October. I roped in a few friends to help provide supplies along the way, with Jon naturally assuming a role in charge of support crew. Knee just about recovered, I began to hope that a last attempt at 100 miles was within reach. Then, one week out, a lot of rain came and, with it, the early arrival of mud season. Those 100 miles weren’t going to be quite so straightforward.
When we arrived at the coastal town of Harwich on a brisk Saturday morning, the sun was out and I passed a load of hay-bales while it shone, making slow but undeniable progress through the Essex countryside. As dusk approached, a passing dog walker enquired how far I was going. He couldn’t quite believe that I was headed all the way to London and, just a third of the way in, neither could I. That night brought with it an almost biblical deluge – the kind you hear on the roof from your bed and are grateful you don’t have to venture out into.
Well, I was mid-venture and no amount of storm-soaked suffering was going to stop me continuing. People make a virtue of grit, determination, fortitude and resilience. But as I sloshed my way through puddle-strewn paths and lanes that had become lakes, I didn’t ‘dig deep’, I simply kept going. Knowing you’ve got lung cancer really gives you a sense of ‘now or never’ and though the miles ticked by agonisingly slowly, nothing was getting in my way that tempestuous night.
On and on I doggedly continued – fed up of running, food, water refills, bag changes, blisters, everything and everyone. When I reached the end of the Essex Way, Jon headed the flotilla of support runners and, step by step, we ground out the last 20 miles, averaging over 17 minutes for each. It took 29 hours. It took all the physical, mental and emotional strength I had. But somehow, I ended up at Tower Hill just after my watch beeped its 100th mile split and I collapsed as violent sobs rocked my shattered body to the core. I almost didn’t notice the homemade medal hung around my neck as I gave Jon the biggest hug my withered arms could muster. He’d earned this moment just as much as I had.
I’d done it. Despite everything, I’d taken my three cancer sites and bag full of shit on this most epic of journeys and lived to tell the tale. This wasn’t supposed to be possible. To my knowledge, no one else has run this far with a stoma, let alone metastatic bowel cancer. It took finishing the job to really take in the scale of what I’d achieved.
Many ultrarunners, myself included, tend to have a kind of flat feeling after a really long run that often results in signing up for another race. This time, I didn’t. Maybe that’s because, no matter how much I deteriorate, I’ll always that moment. One last expression of passionate love for the glorious pursuit that has given me so much, seen me through heartbreak, triumph and tragedy, and always, always been there for me.
I may be dying but, for now, I choose to live and show the world that it’s possible to live a full life post-diagnosis. The next thing on my bowel cancer bucket list is to run this month's London Marathon while playing the trombone. Everyone who donates can choose a track for the playlist. And before you ask (at least four people have already), I’ll only play Flight of the Bumblebee if you pledge over £100…because it is a bit ambitious! I owe it to everyone I love and who's supporting me to keep going, keep running and raise awareness in the hope that others – unlike me – can catch cancer early enough to give them a more hopeful prognosis.
In a time when we’re all conditioned to hate our bodies, I have more reason to than most. But just look what mine did for me.
How to taper right to be marathon ready.
