Run a marathon? Try 100 in 100 days

Müsabaka gündeminden önemli bir haber: Sport Insight Run a marathon? Try 100 in 100 days Published 16 minutes ago Image source, Natalie Smith and Hannah Cox By Tom Reynolds , Sport journalist and Nicola Pearson , Sport senior journalist The soles of Hannah Cox's trainers tell their own story. Patched up with pieces of a car tyre and orange with dust, it's clear they have covered a lot more ground than just a solitary marathon.

While some of the thousands of finishers of Sunday's London Marathon might be waking up barely able to get down the stairs, vowing 'never again', consider this - what if you now had another 26. And then another, and another and another. For 100 consecutive days?

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On top of that, until 18 months ago, you had never run. This is the epic and emotional adventure that is stamped into those trainers. Image source, Natalie Smith Image caption, Hannah shared the roads with plenty of companions For several years, Cox had an ambitious route in mind - she just hadn't decided how she would travel along it.

Following her father's death in 2011, the 41-year-old had become increasingly fascinated by her Indian heritage and in particular with a 4,200km route used by the British in the 19th century to implement a controversial salt tax during its rule over India, a customs barrier which included the Great Hedge of India. When she met up with a friend in the summer of 2024 who asked her if she was "still obsessed with that hedge", she decided it was time to finally make the journey. She had not expected him to say "I think you should run it".

But it sowed a seed and she joined a local running club in Manchester. Soon she was running for 30 minutes three times a week. As her fitness progressed, the 5Ks turned into 10Ks and she began working on the back-to-back running days that were crucial if she was to have any chance of success in India.

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Challenges like "20 20 20" - running 20km every weekday for 20 days and also running seven marathons in seven days from coast to coast of the UK helped convince Cox that 'Project Salt Run' had legs. She quit her job, assembled a support team, acquired a van - and decided she would use the challenge to try to raise £1m for various environmental charities. While she was prepared physically and practically, nothing could ready her for the madness of the roads she would take or the sickness she would battle.

"Everyone tried to put me off at first - people just didn't believe I would actually do it," Cox says. But on 26 October last year, she set off from the Attari-Wagah border between Pakistan and India, bound for Kolkata, just a few miles from where her father Deric was born. She stayed true to the route, which meant there were sometimes days when she ran 42km along a highway "which was boring as hell" but other days were through nature reserves, along canals and through farmers' fields.

There were cows, snakes and goats in the road, while drivers regularly travelled on the wrong side of the highways.

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