The Good Samaritan who helped a runner he’d never met reach his sub-three marathon dream
Rohan Kallicharan came to Jim Hall’s aid as he struggled towards the end of the London Marathon
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Jim Hall is having a “Jonny Brownlee moment”.
He’s in the last couple of hundred metres of the London Marathon, but he can no longer run properly. Lurching like a drunk, Jim’s dreams of cracking the sub-three hour barrier are melting away.
Just like Great Britain triathlete Jonny, whose race towards the line at the Triathlon World Series in 2016 seemed to heading for disaster, Jim had gone from powerful athlete to staggering mess in a matter of seconds.
During that famous race in Cozumel, Mexico, it was Jonny’s brother Alistair who came to the rescue, supporting him towards the finish and eventually pushing him over the line.
For Jim, his hero came in the form of a stranger: Rohan Kallicharan.
It wasn’t the first time the 52-year-old Shrewsbury Athletic Club member, who only started running seriously during the Covid pandemic, had blown-up with a sub-three marathon target in his sights.
In what was his first marathon, at Chester in 2022, despite it being very hot he had been flying at 24-and-a-half miles when his “brain popped”. Jim was forced to struggle home, finishing in a still more than respectable three hours, four minutes and 50 seconds.
In 2023, he qualified for London but after being knocked off his bike about 12 weeks before the race, he reduced his training block and finished in three hours 15. That time allowed him to qualify for a best for age place, and he returned this year with sub-three still on his mind.
“It was fantastic, but I could feel myself getting hot,” he told the Running Tales Podcast, “And I suddenly had a Jonny Brownlee moment outside Buckingham Palace.
“All of a sudden it's like you're drunk. It's just the most bizarre feeling. My legs were absolutely fine, but I just felt drunk.
“You just get crazy legs.”
That’s where Rohan, whose own incredible story features using running to help him tackle mental health issues including bipolar disorder, came in.
Rohan, who reached 100 marathons as part of celebrations for his 50th birthday earlier this month, had missed the whole 2022 due to an achilles injury and used the London Marathon as a way of “repairing a relationship with running which had gone astray” due to an obsession with times.
Despite his more relaxed approach, he found himself closing in on a time of around three hours and one minute. Having started slightly earlier than Jim, that meant the pair reached Buckingham Palace almost simultaneously.
“It's the most iconic finish in the world,” he said. “And it was at that point where probably 20 or 30 meters ahead of me I saw someone struggling and looking in discomfort.
“Jim describes it as looking drunk, and, actually, that's a pretty good description. He had wobbly legs and looked as if he could go over at any point in time.
“What I couldn't believe was that no one else stopped in about the five or six seconds I watched him, which just seemed to flash by. So many people ran past. As I got closer, I thought, ‘no-one's gonna stop. I've got to stop’.
“I'm not going to paint myself as a saint. If if I had been at a point where I was two hours 59 minutes and 30 seconds in, would I have done the same thing?
“I think I probably would have done, because ultimately it comes down to being a human being. If I was out on the training run, and went past another human being who looked as if they could face plant at any moment, I wouldn’t run past them.
“It was a really easy thing to do. Just to stop.”
Rohan said he had put an arm around his fellow runner and asked how he could help him towards the finish line, which by that point was just metres away.
The pair had moved forward together for around 15 seconds before marshals dived in and asked Rohan to move on.
Jim, who had also suffered a fall at a half-marathon in Wrexham following a similar experience, said he had been immediately grateful for Rohan’s assistance.
He said at no point did he feel he would have rather continued on his own: “I knew what was going to happen. It is almost like your head weighs 15 stone and your body weighs two stone. It's not going to hold you up.
“When he said to me, what can I do for you, I just said ‘hold me up’. My legs were working, but my face was going to hit the ground.
“I was happy because I had been so frustrated. You put all this effort in. I’d got a minute in the bag, I was going to do two hours 58-something. It was all going to be great.
“And then, I was 50 yards away but it may as well have been a mile. It just looked so far away.”
Buoyed by Rohan’s help, Jim rallied to not only make it in to the finish line, but to do so in a time of two hours, 59 minutes and 57 seconds - three seconds inside his sub-three hour target.
Click the Instagram post below to watch our chat with Rohan Kallicharan and Jim Hall in full on the Running Tales Podcast.
But what about the Good Samaritan who helped him get there?
Rohan had duly finished his race, and it was only after he had cheered a friend to his own marathon success that his thoughts turned to the runner he had helped.
He told Running Tales: “It was a couple of hours later, when I suddenly thought, ‘crikey, how's that guy, how is he getting on?’
“I remember saying, ‘I've got to find out how how that guy's got on’ but I wasn't sure how do I how do I do it.
“Among 50,000 runners, what are you going to do? And then, of course, my wife said about looking at the BBC finish cameras. When I went home that evening, I had a quick look and managed to get a screengrab of Jim and I.”
Rohan said he took a long time thinking about if he should post the picture or not, afraid he might upset a runner he had found in their worst state and nervous he would be seen as sugarcoating his own ego.
But he ultimately wrote a short post on X, formerly Twitter, asking if anyone knew the man and if had finished ok.
“That was all I want to know,” Rohan said. “But I woke up the next morning, and my Twitter had gone absolutely ballistic.
“And among all the messages was one from a certain Jim Hall saying, ‘yes that's me, thank you so much’.”
Meet Jim Hall and Rohan Kallicharan:
JIM HALL: Until recently, Jim was a casual runner, taking part in local 10ks and the odd parkrun.
But when Covid hit and he couldn't play his favoured pool and billiards, Jim fell into a new routine of just working and running.
Before he know it, he’d lost one-and-a-half stone and got two minutes quicker over 5k.
Since then, Jim has joined Shrewsbury Athletic Club, and has been aiming to become the best running version of himself possible - at 52 years old.
This year, he completed the London Marathon in an incredible sub-three hour time, telling Running Tales he’s amazed at the progress he’s made and how his times have fallen.
ROHAN KALLICHARAN: Rohan, a sub-three hour marathoner, has just achieved something extraordinary.
The man dubbed by friends as 'Ro Farah' marked his 50th birthday by reaching 100 marathons earlier this month
But that achievement barely touches the surface of Rohan's story.
Over a 15 year period, starting when he was a teenager, he struggled with his mental health, attempting suicide three times before eventually being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
With a lot of hard work, Rohan was able to move forward with his life, but in confronting his mental demons he began to neglect his physical wellbeing, ballooning up to 19 stone.
It was only when he visited the London Olympic Games in 2012 that Rohan realised it was time to do something about his weight. Shortly afterwards he started running - and he's barely stopped since.
Jim takes up the story again: “I was absolutely chuffed. You work so hard when you are marathon training and the race is the culmination of all that.
“My watch was telling me I’d done three hours and two seconds, so I was thinking I’d have to do it all again. I got my bag and switched my phone on, and the first text that come through was off London Marathon saying my time.
“I just saw the two and didn’t care what the rest said. There was euphoria and hugs, and a night out with about 20 others from Shrewsbury AC.
“But I also just wanted to say thank you to the wonderful person who had helped me. I went on Twitter and it was ridiculous - I had about 4,000 notifications - and there was the post.
“It’s not my best picture! But honestly, I felt like a celebrity. It was just something else.
“There were some cracking official photos I just had to buy to see where it all went wrong, and you can see it like a horrible slideshow where I go from runner to drunk man. The marshals, as much as they were amazing, look like they are arresting me. There are pictures where I’m hunched over and they’ve got my arm behind me as if they were about to cuff me.
“And this is where Ro knew what I wanted. He kept me upright so I had momentum rather than dragging me backwards.
“It was great. Runners know what other runners want.”
As Jim Hall had his Jonny Brownlee moment, he also had one huge slice of luck. Rohan Kallicharan was there to have an Alistair Brownlee one.
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