Nick Butter - Running The World: My World-Record Breaking Adventure to Run a Marathon in Every Country on Earth

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First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright Nick Butter 2020

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ISBN: 978-1-473-56765-8

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I am the sum of those around me.

To those with whom I shared footsteps,

To those who edged me closer to adventure and away from the comfort zone,

To those who donated to help fight prostate cancer,

To those who believed,

To those who enabled,

To those who shared kind words,

To the schools who cheered me on,

To those who sheltered and fed me,

To those who humbled me,

To the selfless and the patient,

And to Kev; the man who sparked the dream and changed my life for ever.

I am the sum of those around me.

To you all I owe you the world.

Thank you.

Last, and by all means most Mum, Dad. This was your journey as much as it was mine. I really couldnt have done it without you. Words will never be enough. I love you, and thank you.

I was coming to the end of a long run in Croatia when I happened across a motto on a sundial that has stuck in my head. Usually short and fatalistic, sundial mottos often refer to the passing of time; understandable, I guess. This particular sundial was old and scruffy, and the copper plate had oxidized over the years to a dirty green. After some cleaning, the words tedious and brief were revealed. This, I assumed, was referring to our lifetimes. Brief? Yes, sadly. But tedious? Hell no, thats up to me, I thought. And if its up to me, I dont choose tedious. I choose full to bursting and downright chaotic.

This book is about that desire and drive to avoid the tedious and to squeeze every single second out of life. It is also about fostering a passion for adventure, and for the people and places that make up our wonderfully diverse planet.

Kev is tall, just over 6 foot, and well built. He doesnt possess a single strand of hair on his head and can usually be found wearing a warm ear-to-ear smile. And if the grin isnt visible on his lips, you can still see it in his eyes. A bromance, from my perspective at least, was blossoming. We met whilst running the Marathon des Sables ultra-event in the depths of the Sahara Desert back in April 2016; a seven-day, multi-stage race across nearly 300 kilometres of sand dunes for fun. My brilliant rebel of a coach, Rory Coleman, had selected a bunch of us to join him. Rory is a 14-time veteran of the race and a legend in his own right. To be selected to accompany him was an honour. It was like being ushered into the VIP area at Glastonbury, except with no mud and certainly no rain; just a desert, sand and wind.

Theres a lot more to say about the great bunch of people I met on that trip. Not only did we all bond so well that we are all still in touch to this day, but the conversations we had that week, under camel-hair bivouacs, in 51C heat, were for me a tipping point. The desert is a harsh place. The dunes rise higher than youd imagine, sometimes triple the height of double-decker buses, and with sand more golden than expected. With 700 or so people dropped in the middle of a vast nine million square miles of rolling sand dunes, it was here that my life was about to take a unexpected shift in direction.

As a kid I had always sought out adventure; as a grown-up facing the prospect of 40 years of nine-to-five office grind and mortgage repayments No thanks, I thought. And yet I had no other ideas. Ultimately the careers advice, along with my dads, led me to exactly that kind of nice, sensible job and the comfortable normalities of office life: I went into banking. And whilst it paid the bills, it wasnt for me, as I was often reminded by work colleagues.

But throughout my ten years of office life, I was also mentally filing away all sorts of alternative advice: attending adventure lectures, listening to motivational speakers and inching further and further towards doing what I wanted. And then, after all those years of dreaming, of making plans and dipping my toes into a life I wished for but wasnt sure I could have, I met Kev. Kev gave me the push I needed.

On the face of it, Kev was a normal chap. Tall with a broad grin and infectious positivity, it was clear that he was a man on a mission and he seemed right at home during the desert race much more than many of us, thats for sure. Kev wasnt like us other competitors. On day two of the Marathon des Sables, Kev and I were chatting, the usual stuff really, when out of the blue he told me that he had terminal prostate cancer and was dying, potentially very soon.

At the age of 49, in November of 2014, Kev and his family had their lives tipped upside down when a routine ultrasound picked up an abnormally high PSA (prostate-specific antigen) score. A normal score is about four; his was 342. Hed been given as little as two years to live. His three kids were aged just nine, 14 and 16.

As Kev told me his story, I was struck by his determination to live whatever life he had left to the absolute fullest, to make every day count. And here I was, complaining about the heat and my aching legs. The conversation was brief, but incredibly powerful. His words to me were: Dont wait for a diagnosis. Its these words that resonated with me so profoundly. So, Im not waiting. I am charging forward, filling my days.

Ive realized that life isnt just short, its that we can be so complacent with our time. After years of dreaming about something bigger, this Running the World trip was about acting on Kevs advice. I finally had the impetus I needed to give it a go.

I set out to live Kevs counsel to live life to the full, to dream big, and to use each and every one of those days with a smile on my face, appreciating how incredibly lucky I am to be alive. And the big dream I reached for was that teenage what if: to run a marathon in every country on our planet. To do so in the name of a worthwhile cause, helping people with the same diagnosis as Kev, would be my motivation.

What happened over that 23-month journey was more than I could have ever dreamed of and, better still, with the help of thousands of donations we raised over 200,000 for the charity Prostate Cancer UK.

What follows is an account of those months, of my travels around the world on a quest to run a marathon in every one of its 196 countries. Before I continue, you may be wondering how on earth Ill fit it all into a single book. Well, as Im sure you understand, to assign a diary-style section of uniform length to each country would make for a pretty dispassionate account of an exciting expedition and so while Ill include every country, this wont be an account of the 196 times I packed my bag, the 196 times I nearly missed the plane, the 196 times I really didnt want to get out of bed. Instead Ill share with you the life-changing memories, thoughts, struggles and emotional experiences, from wherever I happened to be at the time. Its a story from the heart, and I hope the reality of life on the road will shine through. Persistence and joy too joy to live, and have the privilege to run free, and smile a smile of overwhelming appreciation for my short time on our planet.