PE at Marston: Ben Smith 401 marathon runner visits Marston School

Friday 18th was the last day of our Anti Bullying week and we welcomed Ben Smith to tell us about his amazing challenge to run 401 marathons in 401 days to raise £250,000 for 2 anti bullying charities. Our Bronze Sports Ambassadors welcomed Ben and Chris from Inspire+ , they joined us just as we were selling our cakes, biscuits and juice- they loved Ben and Tom's biscuits.
After break the whole school met in the hall and listened as Ben told us why he decided to run 401 marathons. He was bullied for 8 years at school and felt miserable and then found he loved to run . This made him feel better in himself.From this Ben decided to use this new found love of running to help raise money to help other children who were being affected by bullying. Marston children joined Ben in May 2016 ( see previous Blog) on his 247th marathon.
Ben finished his 401st marathon in his home town of Bristol and raised over his target, £310,000 for his 2 chosen charities. Ben completed 401 marathons in 401 days despite suffering a broken bone in his back and having to rest for 10 days. This therefore meant that he had to run more than 26 miles some days to make up the lost days whilst his back was healing. Ben finished his 401st marathon in his home town of Bristol and raised over his target, £310,000 for his 2 chosen charities.
Ben encouraged us to dream big and never give up, to remain positive and if we want something... to go for it!
We had time for questions and a whole school photo.

Ben introducing himself and asking if we knew how far a marathon was. To put it into context he asked how many times round our field would we have to run to complete a mile- about 32 so how many for a marathon? Over 800 and for 401 marathons....333,632 times approximately!