Steve Cushing: The 75-year-old with a pacemaker… who runs ultra marathons
With events such as Antarctica’s Ice Marathon and MDS behind him, Steve Cushing now has an eight-day adventure in Nepal in his sights
Sometimes a description, however accurate, doesn’t tell the full story.
Take Steve Cushing.
He’s a 75-year-old, retired GP and back-of-the-pack runner with two artificial hips and a pacemaker.
Or perhaps he’s an ultra marathoner who became the ninth person ever to complete a marathon in the Antarctic, has conquered the toughest footrace on earth, and is about to embark on an eight-day, high-altitude run through Nepal.
Of course, both things can and are true at once. And that’s where the magic happens.
Only when you start to unravel the story of a runner who did cross-country at school to avoid the rugby field, a marathoner who was told he wouldn’t walk again after an equestrian accident, and the kind of man who flicks through a magazine and finds himself in the Antarctic Circle as a result, do you start to get the full picture.
To tell Steve’s story it makes sense to start at the end, with that upcoming race across Nepal.
Called the Mustang Trail Race, it is an eight-stage, high-altitude run through the trans-Himalayan region of the south Asian country. The event takes place between March 28 and April 9 and totals 170km (105 miles).
No single stage is longer than 30km (18 miles), but the race travels along remote trails featuring 8,500 metres (28,000ft) of vertical climbs and a maximum altitude of 4,300 metres (14,000ft).
“Mustang looks like a really interesting place to go,” Steve told the Running Tales Podcast. “It’s not been open to people very long, so not many have been there.
“The big problem is the fact that we’re running at altitude, anywhere between 2,900 metres at the lowest point and at the highest we get to 4,300 metres. So, I think I might be gasping for a bit of oxygen as I try and drag myself around the trails.
“I’m really excited. I’m really looking forward to getting there.”
Steve first visited Nepal back in 1972 as a medical student. He spent eight weeks there as part of his studies, but this will be the first time he has returned.
He said: “I love the mountains, and to be in the mountains and enjoy that scenery in that environment will be incredible.
“And the people, particularly in these more remote areas, are often incredibly welcoming and friendly, and they’re willing to give when they’ve got nothing to give. It’s a real lesson for us in the West sometimes.”
Embracing the power of hiking:
Having previously completed events including The Ice Marathon in Antarctica and the Marathon des Sables, Steve is no stranger to extreme races - or preparing for them.
His Mustang Trail Race training to date has featured the usual increasingly long runs, coupled with tempo work and hill intervals. He has also been concentrating on spending vital time on his feet, undertaking long hikes.
“There is absolutely no way anybody, but particularly myself as a back of the pack runner, is going to be running the whole event,” he said.
“I’ll be carrying on with some more tempo training, but I’m getting to the stage when it needs be more race specific. For those final couple of months, I’ll be doing a lot of long-distance stuff, a lot of long days on the trails and then starting to put together some back-to-back sessions.
“The idea will be to do a long day and then go out the next day and do another long day, trying to mimic the sort of situation that I’ll face when I get out to Mustang - minus the altitude of course.”
The power of hiking is something Steve knows all about having speed- and power-hiked his way through a lot of the Marathon des Sables in 2009.
He told Running Tales that much of the secret to finishing ultra races comes from knowing when to run - and when not to.
“Sometimes you see people on the trails and they’re running uphill - I say running, but it’s in inverted commas,” he said. “You’re actually expending far more energy than you need to, and not getting any additional benefit.
“Good power hikers will often power hike past people who think they’re running. And in the process you’re not using anything like as much energy, and obviously that’s so important when you’ve got such a long, long day and a long series of days as well.
“Even top, top ultra runners will have to power hike. Tom Evans, who recently won the UTMB, talks about power hiking.
“I will have my hiking poles with me, and certainly on anything that’s more than just a slight incline uphill I will be walking and then I’ll be running on the level. And when it’s not too technical, I’ll be running on the downhills - but when I say running, it certainly still won’t be at any fast speed. It’ll be a plod.
“One of the nice things about the Mustang Trail Race is that they don’t have cutoff times. They want to make sure you finish. And even nicer, on the way around, there’s some interesting places to visit, some monasteries and caves with cave paintings.
“If you go in, they even stop the clock and they start it as you come out because they want to encourage you to actually enjoy the experience and the culture.”
Running on ice, freezing temperatures, wicked winds… ‘I thought it sounded interesting’:
Steve’s love of running dates back to school, when a desire to avoid rugby saw him take to the cross-country course. Although he took a break while at university, he picked the sport up again in his early-30s.
A series of marathons, including London in “something like three hours eighteen,’ followed before he was involved in a horse-riding accident that almost stopped him running altogether.
When the horse he was on reared up, Steve was thrown into the air and onto the concrete below. Worse, the horse followed him, collapsing to the floor with its hindquarters crashing into the middle of Steve’s pelvis.
“It was smashed in four places,” Steve said. “They weren’t even sure I was going to live, never mind walking. And they certainly told me I’d never run again.
“I stopped doing marathons. but I carried on doing relatively short distances.”
Things might have settled there if it hadn’t have been for a “tiny little article in one corner of a page of Runner’s World magazine”.
The short piece was entitled ‘Ice Marathon’ and it revealed details of a new race in the Antarctic, held just a few hundred miles from the South Pole.
Steve said: “It was talking about katabatic winds [powerful, cold and dry winds that flow downslope] and sub-zero temperatures, and running on ice and snow.
“I thought, ‘that sounds really interesting’ and unfortunately for me, or fortunately, there was a website. I went and had a look, and I had absolutely no intention of taking part. I just thought that looks really interesting.
“But somehow it got to me and I kept going back to this website.”
Eventually, Steve broached the subject of the race with his wife, telling her he was thinking of running another marathon after all - and then revealing it would be in the Antarctic.
“She said I was mad, but a lot of people have said that subsequently and she was more than happy for me to go,” he said. “So, in 2006 I went down to Antarctica -and what an experience it was.
“I think I’m right in saying I was the ninth person in the world ever to have run a marathon inside the Antarctic Circle, which is my only claim to fame. I’ll have it on the gravestone one day.”
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Steve’s Antarctic Circle claim to fame came partly due to the inaugural nature of the Ice Marathon when he took part, but it still ranks as a formidable achievement.
Before that first race, just three people had run marathons at the South Pole - one of whom decided to form the new event.
“There were only nine of us did it that first year and I was the sixth,” Steve said, “but it’s been run every year since then and there’s quite a lot of people do it.”
It was an event that almost didn’t happen, with the area’s striking weather conditions threatening to stop competitors even reaching the start line.
“We got to Punta Arenas in Chile and we were waiting to fly into Antarctica on the sort of plane you see when food aid is taken out to third world countries,” Steve explained.
“We were due to land on a one mile strip of blue ice, a pretty treacherous landing. We had some incredible pilots but they had to wait for the weather conditions to be right before we could take off.
“And, we had something like 20, 23 weather checks over a three day period, waiting to go in. You can imagine the anxiety and the pressure. It was just mounting and mounting.”
Eventually, the nervous runners were able to land at 11pm, emerging from the plane “onto this one mile strip of blue ice and it was broad daylight”.
Steve added: “It was the most amazing experience. I just stood there and looked around and thought, ‘if Shackleton or Oates or anybody had been in this spot all those years ago, it would have looked just the same as it looks now’.”
The race started the following morning, with runners buried in several layers of clothing: “We were just running on this strip of ice, and it was a beautiful day.
“For the first 15 to 20 miles, we were running between some mountain ranges, and then after 20 miles we were back at Base Camp, and had a six mile loop to finish off.
“That’s when the wind got up. We were having 50-mile per hour winds. On the way back, for the last three miles, I was not only running on ice and snow when the temperature was - with the wind chill factor - about minus 20, but I was running into a 50-mile per hour wind.
“And I looked and could see just massive distances in every direction. Whichever way I looked, I couldn’t see anybody else or anything else at all.
“It was just me and this huge expanse, and it was great. I just struggled my way over the last few miles and eventually there was the Base Camp and it was done.”
Another aspect of running in the Antarctic which struck Steve, who is also a passionate nature photographer in his spare time, was the silence he encountered.
“There was no wildlife whatsoever,” he said. “There was nothing at all. There were no birds, there were no insects, there were no mammals.
“The day after the marathon finished, I went off and just wandered off on my own, and sat down and there was total silence. You don’t get that anywhere, but you couldn’t hear a thing.
“You could hear the wind blowing and that was it. There was no noise of vehicles, of people, of birds singing. There was nothing. It was just total, total silence.”
From dodging thermometers in awkward places to beating the weather:
With his Antarctic experience behind him, Steve was in no mood to go back to running local five or 10km events. Not long after the Ice Marathon was safely under his belt, he turned his sights on an event at the other end of the temperature extremes.
The Marathon des Sables heralds itself as the toughest footrace on the planet. Taking place over six days in the Sahara Desert, the event dates back to 1986 when a group of 23 runners took part in the inaugural race.
Daytime temperatures can reach 50°C (122°F), while the often treacherous desert terrain features sand dunes, rocky ground, and salt flats. Competitors must carry all the food and equipment they need, although rules around water have been relaxed with checkpoints now present on the course.
Steve’s training for the Sahara included a trip to Liverpool University, where he used a treadmill in a heat chamber that reached temperature of 40°C (104°F).
“What they won’t let you do is run if your core body temperature gets too high,” he said. “The whole time I was running on the treadmill, they were monitoring my temperature.
“Now, you can measure temperature through people’s mouth or their ears, or various other places. I won’t tell you which orifice they were using to measure my body temperature, but it’s where the sun doesn’t shine.
“So, there I was running on the treadmill with this thermometer stuck up this orifice and fortunately it fell out. I can assure you I wasn’t going to tell them and let them replace it.”
When Steve finally made it to Ouarzazate in Morocco, where the race was due to start, he was confronted once more by his nemesis - the weather.
Torrential rain resulted in flash flooding that resulted in several local people being killed. Day one of the event was cancelled and there were question marks over the whole race.
“At one point the road behind us was washed away. I remember walking around the base camp with some flip flops on and they were just disappearing in the mud. They were just being sucked off,” Steve told Running Tales.
“They had to take us away from the base camp and find accommodation for 600 to 700 people. Eventually, they got the race going, but it was all very uncertain.
“I think they made up for it on the long day, though. That’s usually around 45 to 50 miles, and if you do it in one day and get back to your tent, you’ve got the next day to recover. Some people sleep out overnight and finish it off on the second day, but you never know until the night before exactly how far it’s going to be.
“My long day in the Marathon des Sables is the longest they’ve ever run. It was 57 miles through the desert. That was one hell of a day.”
Steve said that despite the heat and desert conditions, he believes the Marathon des Sables is an event that is realistically within the reach of any runner who can complete a marathon.
“Of course, it’s difficult, but with the right training and the right mindset, I think it’s within the grasp of so many people,” he said. “I always want to push myself to see what I can achieve. And I think a lot of people push themselves so far and then stop.
“But actually to say, ‘right, I’m going to take on one of these tougher events, I’m going to take on the Marathon des Sables,’ I think a lot of people would surprise themselves with what they could do.”
‘I never think about my hips. I never think about my pacemaker - you just get on with it’:
While Steve shrugs aside questions about his age and longer-term medical issues, he does admit to having suffered “the most horrific injury” in 2025.
He told Running Tales: “I never think about my hips. I never think about my pacemaker. They don’t give me any problems. They’re not an issue at all.
“You just get on with it, but more recently I’ve had a real problem. I was actually meant to be doing the Mustang Trail Race in 2024.
“And in November 2024, I went up to the Lake District for the Kendall Mountain Festival. I was doing a bit of training and suddenly I felt something in my Achilles tendon. I couldn’t stop because I was out in the middle of nowhere, so I headed back.
“But before I got back to the car, I ruptured my Achilles tendon. So, there was no way I was going to be doing the Mustang Trail Race just a few months later.
“I rearranged for 2025. And, in April 2024, when I should have been doing the Mustang Trail Race, I was up on the Isle of Lewis. My coach and physio had said that I would be able to start running when I got back.
“I was out on my own one day on the cliffs, doing some photography, and my right leg slipped and my left leg folded underneath me and I felt a crack, and I snapped my quadriceps tendon, which is the most horrific injury.
“I’ve never done anything like it. So, that was 2025 out the question. This will be third time lucky, so I’m hoping I get there.”
Steve’s Mustang Trail challenge also comes with the side benefit of helping him raise money for two important organisations: Partners in Education, Swaziland and Everybody Counts.
The first provides meals for children in education in what was Swaziland, now renamed Eswatini. Many of those who benefit are orphans, with as little as £8 able to feed a child for a month.
The second is Everybody Counts, a small organisation which supports the daughter of Steve’s nephew, Andrew. Caitlin, who is just 13, was born with a rare genetic condition called KIF1A.
It provides respite care, Saturday clubs and specialist activities for children and adults with complex needs.
Steve said: “Not only is PIES raising money to feed the children, but they’re actually starting to help them to become self sufficient.
“They’ve got beehives and they’re growing honey, they’ve got sewing machines and they’re now starting to make clothing and getting them to become independent.
Sponsor Steve Cushing to run the Mustang Trail Race for:
“It really is an important charity and all the money, every single penny, goes to help those children, who otherwise would have a pretty horrible existence.
“My nephew, Andrew, and his wife, Becky, are backed by Everybody Counts. They have a daughter called Caitlin, who’s a lovely girl.
“She’s 13, but she was born with an incredibly rare, genetic condition. There’s only a handful of people in the world who have this condition and it leaves her with a global developmental delay.
“She’s got significant physical and learning disabilities. She’s got visual impairment, she’s got Type 1 diabetes. That means she needs insulin and she’s got autism, which brings plenty of challenges in everyday life.
“I was talking to Andrew just a couple of nights ago and they were in the process of trying to get Caitlin to bed. It takes them two hours most nights to get her to settle down to bed and get to sleep.
“Everybody Counts is a really small organisation, but the support it provides is absolutely life changing.”
Running towards his 90s:
With the Mustang Trail Race firmly in his sights, it may seem unfair to quiz Steve on what might be coming next. But his quest for adventure means there were bound to be further plans ahead.
“I’ve got a few ideas in mind,” he said, “but I’d better tell my family first.”
But there is one event already in his sights: The Lap, a 45-mile race round Lake Windemere.
“It depends on how well I cope with the Mustang and how quickly I recover,” Steve said. “I’m not going to do it if there’s any risk that I haven’t fully recovered.
“But I’ll have been running at altitude for eight days. I should be fairly fit and if I’ve recovered and haven’t got any injuries, then that is potentially another target.
“My plan is still to be doing this in another 10 and even 20 years time. You see some people who are in the 90s who are doing running and taking on events.
“So, I think, well, why not?”
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What a story! Inspiring stuff.
Incredible and inspiring story! Thank you