Kiladangan man who ran the length of Britain
Nobody does what Ben Banaghan did without a purpose. He ran the length of Britain. The whole circuit. From top to bottom. John O’Groats to Land’s End. Starting at the northernmost tip of Scotland, where an Arctic chill sweeps up off the North Sea, he tore his way down through the Highlands, winding along the roads of an almost mythical landscape until he reached civilisation in the form of Edinburgh and Glasgow. From there the 25 year-old Kiladangan man set off across the border, into Cumbria and the Lake District, before crossing Lancashire and steering through the Black Country, the former industrial heartland of Britain, where Brexit and Boris continue to enjoy widespread support. He crossed into Wales for a day, jogging through its lush fields and grasslands, before shooting down towards the south coast, into sunny Cornwall, where the land eventually runs out and the Atlantic fills the horizon.
It all sounds so romantic, and in many ways, Ben admits that it was. But it was also an arduous, painful, physically exhausting, and psychologically draining journey. There were days when he thrived. There were days when he struggled. He had to cope with the full spectrum of emotions, from adrenaline powered highs to fatigue fuelled lows. They were all part of the process.
“The way I try to explain it is to visualise a graph with a baseline which has positive numbers above it and negative numbers below. And those numbers represent your feelings and emotions. And obviously your feelings and emotions fluctuate, so one day you could go up three points, you could be feeling fairly positive, but the next day you might go down into the negative. But as the run went on and I became more sleep deprived, the waves of emotion were just getting bigger and bigger. Particularly the negative waves, because my body was just under so much stress.”
CONSTRUCTION WORKER
A construction worker based in London, Ben has now completed two feats of extreme endurance. In 2021 he ran the length of Ireland in aid of Mental Health. Upon finishing that challenge he set his sights on Britain.
And last September, he ticked it off. Why, you might ask, would an individual undertake such a gruelling feat, such an outlandish challenge. On one level, Ben is doing this for charity. On another, he’s doing it for himself. The Kiladangan native decided he wanted to test his limits, and with that make a positive impact on broader society. His most recent feat was dedicated to raising funds for both Mental Health UK, and the Join Our Boys Trust foundation - a charity established in 2014 to raise funds for three Roscommon brothers, all of whom suffer from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a fatal genetic muscle wasting disease which currently has no treatment or cure. Unfortunately, one of those three brothers, Archie, passed away during the summer at the age of 16. His siblings, 12 year-old twin brothers George and Isaac, continue to battle, as researchers endeavour to find treatment methods to delay the advance of the condition.
Ben’s reason for supporting the Join Our Boys Trust wasn’t rooted in a family history of the condition or a personal connection to the three brothers. It was, essentially, random. An act of sheer, arbitrary compassion, towards a family and a cause that needed solidarity and support.
“I just kind of Googled GoFundMe pages, to look for people who were struggling or cause that needed support. And then I just saw the family and once I read the story, that was that, I knew I wanted to help these people.”
Physiological awareness
Both his chosen charities, the Naughton family and Mental Health UK, were at the forefront of his mind throughout the run, but that sort of motivation only gets you so far. He had to train brutally hard for this. He had to exhaust every element of possible preparation and ensure his level of physiological awareness was impeccable. Previous experience helped. The fact that he had run the length of Ireland, and lived to tell the tale, equipped him for this experience. Even though the scale was greater, and the distance far longer (over 1,200km), he sort of knew what it would entail. He knew what it would demand - of his body and his mind.
“In terms of the challenge itself, because I had run Ireland before, I kind of knew the sort of challenges this would involve, so I don’t want to say I found this one easier, but I certainly didn’t find it harder than when I did Ireland. And that was just because I knew what to expect - I knew the muscle groups, I knew where I’d be sore, when I should push, when I should pull back. I had a better understanding of the process as a whole, a better appreciation of the challenge.”
Still, feats such as the one Ben undertook - and successfully completed - are different from your standard endurance race. There is no designated route, no clear and open roadways, no water stations waiting for you every fifteen minutes. It is essentially a DIY effort, an exercise in self-survival in which you do the planning, the organisation, and the running. And it takes its toll. Ben doesn’t furnish the experience. The days were long and gruelling. The nights tormented by symptoms such as sore feet and restless legs. Some of it was strangely enjoyable. Most of it wasn’t.
“Generally, on a normal day, I would have been up at seven, on the road for nine, and then I’d basically be running all day with a few breaks thrown in. I might have had one nap as well halfway through the day. And then depending on weather conditions, depending on how the roads were, I probably would have been finishing up at somewhere between 11pm to 1 or 2am. And then when I’d get back to where I was staying, I would have an ice-bath, a shower, some food, maybe a rub or a massage. But there were so many different factors, so many different variables affecting it all.”
To do these kinds of things, you need a psychological tool-kit, a reserve of emotional energy to power you through on difficult days. For Ben, the finish line represented more than just the culmination of a run. Each day he pictured Land’s End and envisaged what it meant to him. He used a deeply philosophical, almost abstract form of motivation which some people might just dismiss. But it worked for him.
“It might sound cringy and stupid, but I literally just kind of said to myself, the man I want to be in life is waiting for me at the finish line. That’s what I kept telling myself throughout the run. And so even though I had raised a load of money and raised awareness and made an impact, that was all great, but I tried to look past that. The most important thing was for me to get to the finish line. The person I want to be in life was waiting for me down there.”
Extraordinary achievement
By any metric, to run the length of Britain is an extraordinary achievement. What the Kiladangan man did was both a gesture of heartfelt philanthropy and an act of stunning athleticism. Such feats require implacable motivation and self-belief, but they also demand genuine athletic prowess and an in-depth knowledge of one’s body. The run took its toll. Ben is only really just recovered, but he’s already planning his next move. He’s contemplating attempting two similar projects in 2023, though he has yet to finalise the details.
“Even before I ran Britain, I had been looking ahead and planning what I might do next. And I have few ideas, but I’m just after moving to another project with work, so I’m going to give it a little while and then started planning properly for the next one. I might try and do two next year.”
The 25-year-old has spent the past several weeks fielding media requests and speaking about his experience, all in an attempt to raise as much money as possible for his chosen charities. He even appeared on Good Morning Britain, ITV’s flagship morning television programme. That could have been a daunting prospect, but he embraced it, he took it in his stride. All of this - the running, the fundraising, the media exposure - has an addictive quality. Once you enter the game, you never stop. The ideas keep flowing, the ambitions keep floating. At some point you realise that you’re not in it alone. You’re part of something - a movement, a cause, a mission. Ben now knows that.
“This is now something bigger than me, so if I can make an impact on society, on families, on charities, whatever, then I’m going to keep going and try and do that.”