Owen Jones: The accidental runner who beat addiction and ran through Nepal
From the unusual beginnings of a step class dare, Owen’s running journey has always embraced a healthy doses of the unknown
Owen Jones had never intended to be a runner. Instagram
After all, what was the point in running around in a circle and ending up back where you started?
But the self-described ‘accidental runner’ was to suddenly find himself immersed in the sport after a potent mixture of fitness banter and the lack of a decent excuse saw Owen swap the gym for a “tough” first marathon on the streets of Florence.
It all started back in 2013 in the unusual surroundings of a spin class.
Owen said: “I'd always looked at runners as I was driving around and walking around, and thought ‘what is the point of that?’
“You leave your house, you go around in a circle, you come back knackered and you've achieved what?”
He had instead taken up ball games such as hockey and cricket, enjoying the team environments they supplied.
As he got older, and started to find it harder to keep up with teenage opponents in those games, Owen turned to the gym. He joined a spin class and was soon bantering with the lady sitting next to him as they pushed each other to work harder.
Owen said: “A few weeks later, she came up to me in the main gym while I was on some machine or other, doing something and said, ‘I think you've got a marathon in those legs’.
“And then walked off. I just sort of sat there stunned, thinking ‘what a bizarre thing to say’.”
A bewildered and slightly panicked Owen’s first thought was to find a way to say no to something he had “no experience of and no desire to do”.
“I needed to come up with an excuse not to do it,” he said. “But after a couple of days of ruminating, the only excuse I could come up with was, ‘I can't be arsed’.
“And I knew that was never going to be good enough. I was snookered.
“From that point, I thought, I guess I’d better do it.”
Within a couple of weeks, he had signed-up to take on Florence Marathon - “somewhere wonderful” to do a “grim” event.
Initially, training for the race was “a battle of wills” but slowly Owen began to enjoy running.
With Florence successfully completed, he was committed enough to turn his attention to achieving a sub-four hour marathon.
A three hour 59 minute finish at the London Marathon meant that goal was completed by the narrowest of margins, so Owen turned his attention to the running format which possibly best fitted his previously detested idea of the sport as aimlessly traipsing round the countryside in circles.
It was time to try trail running.
‘I wasn’t a trail runner, but I entered a trail marathon in Snowdonia’:
In what is a recurring theme of Owen’s running career, it was once again something of an accidental race that first saw him take on the trails in 2015.
When a “friend of a friend” dropped out a couple of weeks before a trail marathon in Snowdonia, Owen almost surprised himself when he jumped into the breach.
“Running to me at that point was road running,” he said. “Towns and cities and roads, not mountains.
“Foolishly, the way I tend to do things is I'll just go for it. I wasn’t a trail runner, but I entered a trail marathon in Snowdonia.
“It wasn’t like it was a 10k, little yomp around the fields.”
Owen remembers running “up and down, up and down” the mountainside when a couple stopped just in front of him and “took off their their packs, sat down on a couple of rocks, got a picnic blanket out and started having lunch”.
It was then that he realised he had discovered a different type of running.
“You just go out and go and enjoy it,” he said. “There's no pressure, there's no expectation.
“That couple beat me by a couple of hours. But at the end of those runs, people ask how your run was, not what time you did.”
As it happened, it took him seven-and-a-half hours to complete the race, but Owen didn’t care. He was hooked.
Trail running in places such as Snowdonia, the Black Mountains, the Brecon Beacons and the Wye Valley became commonplace.
“I like about getting out in the countryside,” he said. “I look at the wildflowers and, as my wife loves wildflowers, we’ll go for a walk there together later.
“I think my favourite place is the Black Mountains, which are next to the Brecon Brecons.
“Brecon Beacons is pretty full of people, but the Black Mountains are devoid of them, apart from the runners who are there on the day. It's got tough, steep climbs where you wonder what on earth you're doing with your life, and then it’s beautiful, as you come off the top of the mountains.
“I literally put my arms out as I run and just shout with happiness going down there.”
Masking addiction with running and Boot Camps:
But despite his love affair with running having reached new levels, Owen was battling with another, darker addiction, one that threatened to take over and ruin his whole life: alcoholism.
He told the Running Tales Podcast, part of the Everyday Athlete Podcast Network, that he had been a functioning alcoholic, combining his drinking with Boot Camps and running.
In the mornings, he would take what he called his “hangover route” into work and as his addiction progressed he found himself “nipping out at lunchtime for a drink so I could feel better into the afternoon”.
By evening, he would go to Boot Camp sessions and he had even been able to train hard enough to complete that goal of a sub-four hour marathon in London.
But after those fitness bouts, he would visit an off-licence and buy a bottle or two of wine for the night.
“It was a bizarre existence,” he said. “I was reasonably physically fit, but mentally up the creek.
“It got worse and worse in the last year or so, up until I quit about four years ago. In the last year or so, it was getting very messy and heading to a point where I could potentially have lost everything - job, wife, family, kids, the lot.”
Owen said part of his decline included doing less running. He had achieved what he wanted at the London Marathon and completed trail runs in areas like Snowden and the Brecon Beacons.
“Yes, I was drinking while running and doing my boot camps,” he said. “But looking back on it, doing that gave me an excuse to get out of the house and swing by the off-licence because otherwise I'd be in.
“It would be a matter of, ‘I've got to go out. What are you going out for? Well, I'm going to Boot Camp’. Then I happened to come back with my supply.”
It was in 2019, following a chance visit from a neighbour - “I don't know what he said to me because I was drunk” - that Owen took the decision never to drink again.
He said: “I quit overnight after 20 years of trying. At some point you have to put down that last glass.
“It was really starting to affect life at home. It was affecting life at work, because all I was doing was just trying to get through the day rather than progress. I just managed to get through and do the bare minimum.”
The encounter with his neighbour “was incredibly minor” in the great scheme of Owen’s drinking and sobriety journey, but he describes it “as the final piece in my quitting jigsaw”.
As he left alcohol behind, he began to feel fitter and to embrace running again, finding space in life for “more of everything”.
What he hadn’t expected was for that new found ‘more’ to translate into ultra running across the Himalayas.
How ‘never again’ turned into five life defining days in Nepal:
Running an ultra marathon had never been at the forefront of Owen’s mind, but as he continued to run, it slowly became a bucket list idea.
“Given my ability to jump into the deep end, I decided if I was going to do an ultra I’d do a 100k,” he said.
That decision led to him taking on the Race To The Stones along Britain’s oldest pathway, one of the toughest ultras around.
From the very start, Owen realised he had embraced something completely different: “Three of us had trained together in Northampton and as we crossed the start line, my friend Rob very kindly pointed out that we only had 20 parkruns to go.
“We'd set off at about 6.30am and my target was to finish before the sunset. I think this race was on June 17, which is about the longest day there is - but I failed spectacularly.
“After about 15-and-a-half hours in, I was broken. For the last 10-12 miles, I just wanted to curl up on the side of the track, and be picked up and cuddled and taken back home.”
Despite his struggles, Owen did manage to finish the race but as far as he was concerned his ultra running days were over, the bucket list item ticked off and tucked away for good.
But he was lying to himself. Not only did Owen return to ultra running, he did so via a five-day, 123-mile race through the foothills of the Himalayas.
The pull of the Capital to Country Ultra in Nepal came partly from having the opportunity to take on its inaugural event in 2023 and partly from the chance to seek out fresh adventure and challenge.
Owen said: “There was this new, amazing event, a five day ultra in Nepal.
“The wording on Facebook to advertise it and the pictures used meant I was hooked immediately. As soon as I saw that post, I was running that race.
“I knew it was going to be hellish tough, but I had to do it. When wonderful opportunities arise, you have to take them.”
Owen said completing the event - he’s yet to DNF a race - taught him so much about the sport of ultra running.
“An ultra is enough in of itself,” he said. “You don't have to run it. It's a hell of an event in its own right.
“Walk, run it or just walk it - it counts. Most of it in Nepal, I walked. but I've still done it. I'm still delighted that I went.
He added: “Once we got through the third day, and there were only two left, then I knew it was going to be ok.
“The fourth day was tough to get through, but I wasn't looking forward to the last one, because I knew it would be the last.
“And finishing it was oddly quite sad. There was massive elation that I'd achieved something unbelievable for me.
“But it was really, really sad knowing it was over because every hour out on the trail was wonderful. Crossing that finish line was fantastic, but there definitely was an element of sadness in it.”
Previously on Running Tales - Read about Owen Jones’ Nepalese adventure:
In the immediate aftermath of the race, Owen felt he might never want - or need - to run again. But it was the feeling of loss he had that propelled him into entering more races.
The latest on his calendar is a two day event in Morocco, currently around two months away.
“This year has been a whirlwind of change in terms of work and all kinds of other stuff and the training just has not happened,” he said.
“Up until now, somehow or other, I've always managed to finish each race. I'm seriously concerned about this one as I’m nowhere near ready.
“But I've got to go. I'm sure it's not the first time a runner's felt like this or been through a ‘oh crap moment’.
“Somehow or other I'm going to have to pull my socks up. I'm sure I'll be able to pull it out of the hat. I'll get myself there. How we get on when we arrive, we'll have to wait and see.”
Whatever his current doubts, if there’s one thing Owen’s running journey demonstrates it’s that he possesses the resilience to reach the end.
Even if getting started is often something of an accident.
Watch and listen to Owen on the Running Tales Podcast:
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Owen Jones - author:
Owen has written two books about his running. ‘Losing My Addiction’ tracks his sobriety journey, while ‘862 to Kathmandu’ charts his Capital to Country story.
Both books are available on Amazon - and doubtless other places which pay more taxes (so check those out first!).
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