Spencer Matthews: 'How I ran 30 desert marathons in 30 days'
Broadcaster and former Made in Chelsea star Spencer Matthews set a new Guinness World Record last week, running 30 marathons in 30 days, all on sand, through Jordan. Now back in London, RW caught up with the 36-year-old to find out how he trained for the 1,266km challenge, from heat chambers to some serious fuelling.
Runner's World (RW): How did you come up with the idea of running 30 marathons in 30 days in the desert?
Spencer Matthews (SM): The idea for the Great Desert Challenge (GDC) was conceived around Christmastime last year. I was inspired by Russ Cook’s journey through Africa. His enthusiasm and and humour throughout the process was infectious. And I was so happy when I saw him reach his fundraising goal.
I’d had some success in the 2021 Marathon des Sables, where I found that extreme heat and sand kind of suited me. I much prefer it to being cold. And when I came third in the Amazon Ultra, I began to realise that actually, you know, I can do quite well at these types of challenges.
I have a history of alcohol abuse, and for me to be able to prove to my former self that I can do these things is a personal win, too. I wanted to create a challenge that was really impactful and hadn’t been done before. Though I’m obviously not the first person to run 30 marathons in 30 days, I wanted to explore the idea of doing it in a desert. It worked out at being almost exactly five Marathon des Sables, which had a nice ring to it.
RW: You’ve raised a staggering amount for charity. How did you decide on which cause to support?
SM: So, we've raised £590,000, as of the update 15 minutes ago, for Global’s Make Some Noise, which supports a number of small UK charities. Lots of these causes are ones close to my heart. For example, they do quite a lot to help children who suffer from bereavement. I lost my brother when I was 10 years old. Fortunately, I was surrounded by a loving family who guided me through it, but not everybody has that.
The fundraising dimension certainly helped me when I was feeling sorry for myself at times. You realise quickly that the pain you're suffering is temporary, while the illnesses and issues faced by a lot of these young men and women can be permanent.
RW: You’re based in the UK. How do you go about training for a marathon challenge in the Jordanian desert?
SM: I spoke with Chris Taylor, who’s a running coach and very experienced in this field. He devised a plan for me that, as I'm sure you can imagine, included a lot of running. But we also did some heat chamber training.
There's a heat chamber down at the University of London, South Bank. The first day I turned up, they wanted me to run for two hours without a break in 42C. And in my usual optimistic, overly confident manner, I jumped on and started hammering out kilometres on those curved treadmills. About 20 minutes in, I realised that this was going to be a rough ride. Within half an hour, my body temperature was knocking on 40C. So that was a very long and painful two hours. I did 12 hours in total, across six sessions, in temperatures up to 50C. By the end, I could consistently run for two hours, finding it tough, but not as tough as day one!
RW: How did you go about plotting the route for the Great Desert Challenge?
SM: Well, my original idea was to run a 10.5k loop four times in the Sahara. And one of the first things that Chris said to me was. ‘Mate, this will drive you insane, doing the same lap four times every day. Let’s try to move from point A to point B; let’s make every day different.’
One of the highlights was the Wadi Rum desert. Anyone that is familiar with it will know just how beautiful a place it is. They shot The Martian and Lawrence of Arabia there. It's beautiful: thick red sands and incredible starry skies. It’s a completely marvellous place, which made the running of those marathons very palatable, because you just felt like you were lucky to be there.
RW: How did you fuel a huge challenge like this?
SM: Largely speaking, I just ate what I was given! We had a local team of guys, and a chef, who was fantastic. It was good, solid food. Lots of rice – I'd say I probably ate a kilo of rice a day. When we had chicken, which was most days, I’d probably have close to a whole chicken. Eggs in the morning. Lots of pitta breads – maybe 10 pieces of pitta per day. My Oura ring had me burning between 7,000 and 8,000 calories every day, and it’s difficult to replace that level of calorie burn.
RW: Other than the daily marathons, what was the hardest part of this challenge?
SM: We had good company and good humour, but no toilets, no running water and no beds. We were sleeping on the ground, which is not a problem in itself, but in terms of recovery, it’s not ideal.
RW: How did your body hold up? Any injuries sustained along the way?
SM: The human body is the most fascinating thing. I think it has a natural resilience to these things. As soon as my body realised that, right, this is something I'm doing every day, it just drifted into this zone where it just became a reality. It doesn’t matter if you're knackered or starving, this distance has to be covered. Your body would almost run for you.
In the morning, I'd look down at my watch, start the thing, and drift off into some kind of full on daydream. I think people call it flow state, don't they, where you're not even really present? You're just kind of being guided through it. It wasn't always like that, obviously. There were days where you've got a niggle in your foot and you’re checking your watch every 400 metres. But overall, it was an incredible experience that I'll never forget.
RW: In some ways, do you feel like you were getting stronger as the challenge went on?
SM: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my body became far more conditioned to what I was putting it through than on day one. I believe I was 83 kilos at the start, which is slightly heavy for my walking around kind of weight.
And, you know, those first couple of marathons, even just carrying those extra two or three kilos, combined with the travel and the lack of sleep, meant that first marathon was much rougher than I thought it would be. I was just thinking, ‘God, this is going to be a hell of a month.'
Thankfully, I had some experience of ultras coming into this. You learn pretty quickly to put those negative thoughts aside. And then there was a period in the middle, where the marathons kind of felt like they were ticking themselves off. We just found a great rhythm, you know, music that we loved, a routine that didn't quite feel mundane yet – it was a winning formula.
RW: Tell us about your encounter with a venomous snake…
SM: We came across a horned viper. It was early morning. The sun had just come up, so visibility wasn’t perfect. We were running in some tyre tracks. And in one of the rivets created by the tyres was this coiled up horned viper. I hadn’t seen it and had almost trodden on it. We gathered around it after that, because it was this incredible looking thing. It's on my Instagram, if anyone wants to see it. Then the Bedouin guy who looked after us, drove up, noticed that we were looking at something, wound the window down and went, ‘Get away from that snake.’ It’s a very dangerous snake, and if it bit you, you’d be in serious trouble.
RW: Have you dared to start dreaming about the next challenge?
SM: I’ve always loved the idea of Badwater [a 135 mile/217 kilometre footrace through California's Death Valley), and I’d like to have a crack at a sub-three marathon too. I know I’m nowhere near as good as runner as I can be.
I'll always bite off more than I can chew in the hope for success, rather than not pushing it as far as I can go. So, there will definitely be more challenges – and I’ll hopefully attach a meaningful fundraise to each of them.
I had the pleasure of meeting a lot of people in the street since coming home. And it's heartwarming stuff when someone comes up to you and says, ‘I ran my first 10k yesterday because of you.’ It makes you feels like you’ve done something special.
Spencer Matthews is raising money for Global’s Make Some Noise, which supports a number of small UK charities: makesomenoise.com
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