How one man's 'fever dream' saw him run five marathons in five weeks
Colin McCord raised more than £6,000 for Dementia UK when he took on an epic challenge that included the London and Manchester Marathons
If you had to pen an end to a ‘fever dream” then running a marathon on a treadmill in a busy, pre-Bank Holiday Monday John Lewis store, cheered on by thousands of shoppers, is a conclusion even David Lynch might wince at.
Only for Colin McCord it was simply the end to a month of running that tested body and brain.
On Sunday, April 30, the 53-year-old completed five marathons in as many weeks by running the famed 26.2 mile distance on a treadmill at John Lewis in his home town of Bristol.
It was the finale of an epic running challenge - born, in Colin’s words, as a “fever dream” - which also took in the Great Welsh, Magna Carta, London and Manchester Marathons as he raised close to £6,500 for Dementia UK in honour of his mum, Susan.
Colin said Susan, who was diagnosed with dementia four years ago, brought him up as “this very feisty, single parent”.
“She was very strong,” he said. “She loves to travel, loves to laugh and took me to football games at Anfield from a very young age.
“When I started running, she came to see me do the New York and Barcelona Marathons, though she never came to Newport and places like that! She supported me through thick and thin.
“She was fiercely independent and now her independence is lost. I made the decision 14 months ago to put her into a care home, so her independence is sadly gone but her love of life is still there.
“Most people know dementia doesn’t get better, it just gets worse so we are slowly watching mum get worse.”
He said he has received a huge amount of help from Dementia UK, particularly the organisation’s Admiral Nurses.
Colin said: “By the time 2025 comes, there will be a million people in this country with dementia. If we don’t already now, each of us will probably soon know somebody with dementia.”
The formulation of Colin’s extreme challenge - running a marathon every Sunday in April - can be traced back to a typical race director’s trick.
After completed the 2022 Manchester Marathon - a “brilliant” race in which he “smashed a PB” - Colin, while in the midst of post-race euphoria, received an email offering a discount to the following year’s race.
So he did what any self-respecting runner would, and promptly signed-up.
Soon after, he found himself jealously watching the London Marathon, and decided it would be a good idea to run the 2023 event in aid of Dementia UK.
It was only after he’d entered that he realised that race was a week after Manchester.
“Then it turned into some kind of weird fever dream,” he said.
“I looked at the calendar and saw a little symmetry of five Sundays in April so I wondered if there were five marathons, and there were.”
His marathon adventure started with the Great Welsh Marathon on Sunday, April 2 and moved on to the Thames path the following week where he took on the Magna Carta Marathon.
“That was on a Saturday so I only had six days rest,” he said. “It was a lovely, little race - so small I came sixteenth.”
Manchester - “brutal as my body had started to feel it” - and then London - “That broke me. Pain, tears and pride” - followed.
And so on to John Lewis and that treadmill.
“I work in John Lewis and we sell treadmills, so I thought on a busy Sunday before the May Bank Holiday I’d run a marathon on a treadmill,” he said.
“I thought if I did, say, Milton Keynes Marathon I could maybe raise another £500, but if I did a marathon on a treadmill in a John Lewis shop full of people I could probably raise a few thousand.”
He wasn’t wrong. Colin’s fundraising effort for Dementia UK currently stands at £6,485, well in excess of his original £2,500 target.
“This silly fever dream idea I had, to run a lot for mum, will help so many people,” he said.
Now there’s an ending any Hollywood director would be jealous of.
Also on Running Tales:
‘Running is my mental physio’
Running is more than just a sport for Colin McCord.
It has become his main weapon in an ongoing battle against post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), something which has dragged him out of a life that had spiralled into drink and despair after he was violently assaulted.
Colin’s life changed on August 6, 2001 when he was the victim of an armed robbery in which the perpetrators took their anger at there being a lack of money in the place he worked out on him.
“I was the only one there,” he said. “They robbed the place, but there wasn’t much left and they were upset with that.
“I played ball, but they tied me up and they left me for dead basically after what they did with me.
“After the robbery a couple of them decided to stay and take it out on me a little bit.”
When Colin got out of hospital, his physical injuries, including cuts and burns, were healed through medical help, “but the mental side of it stuck around, and still does from time to time.
“It’s comparable to grief, in that in never goes away fully. It gets better and I can help myself with various things like CBT and getting the right counsellor.
“That right counsellor was a runner. They knew the science behind endorphins and serotonin, and how exercise can help you.”
But before Colin found that counsellor his life “during the pit of my despair” hit a series of lows.
“I was a million miles away from crossing the line of running round the block, never mind a marathon,” he said.
“I was smoking, I was drinking. I was drinking to a point where I could finally sleep. I was horrible to myself and my family. I cost me a relationship and it cost me friends.”
He said the counsellor who eventually helped him had told him how “he was going to be my airbag”.
“We were talking about music and one of my favourite bands is Radiohead, and they have a song called Airbag,” Colin said.
“We also talked about running and I said I used to love it. As well as running he got me to help others and to talk to others, either while running or when volunteering for running groups for people who suffer with PTSD or mental health problems.”
Colin said his re-discovery of running, which he had enjoyed as a child growing up in Liverpool, had been a slow process despite his immediate attraction to the idea.
“My initial reaction was to go back and get in the fetal position and close the curtains, and buy some Vodka to get through.
“It’s like if you have a broken leg, you don’t just put a cast on it and then run. It took some time. Running was my mental physio.
“My initial reaction was I love it. It sounds like a great idea. But it was like starting a really massive book. It was as if someone told you this is the best book in the world and it will change your life, but they give you a massive tome that has about 50 chapters, and you look at it and say I’ll get to it, but I’m not sure I can get to it now.
“I would love to be able to say there was one morning where I woke up, looked at myself in the mirror and went out running.
“I just remember the day that I came back and I felt better. It probably wasn’t run one, but run ten or 12.
“It felt like it was a bit childlike, like ‘I enjoyed that’. I wasn’t out of breath, I didn’t want to throw up and I really wanted to do it again - for my own sake rather than somebody saying it is good for me.
“I was down in Somerset, running along the coast. It was a lovely sunny night and I got back home and felt I wanted to do this again.”
Colin said his early running days involved him going out and running “as fast as I could.
“I sometimes would listen to music and podcasts, but a lot of the time I would just listen to the sound of my feet, or the air in my lungs.”
These days his running is more ordered, with technology like Garmin watches and training plans helping him hit goals like running five marathons in as many weeks.
But one thing hasn’t changed. Running remains the best physio his mind could ever have.
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