The London Marathon will see tens of thousands of competitors take to the capital's streets next weekend but, for some runners, the prospect of covering 26.2 miles just isn't enough.
From club runners to Olympians, every athlete has a limit. This limit is defined as the body’s lactate threshold, and when you exercise beyond it, running rapidly becomes unpleasant. We’ve all experienced that burning feeling – heart pounding, lungs gasping for air – as your muscles begin to fatigue, eventually locking up altogether as your body shuts down. However, there is one man whose physiological performance defies all convention: Dan Lawson is an ultrarunner from Brighton, and at times, it seems as if he can run forever.
Lawson has run in every corner of the world since finding the courage to turn his back on the pathway that had been laid out for him as a Community Coach at Brighton & Hove Albion Foundation to pursue his real dreams in life.
Having clocked up over 100,000 miles, the 52-year-old has completed some of the toughest endurance events on the planet. With the calibre of winning the Grand Union Canal Race with a new course record in 2015 and the IAU 24 Hour European Championships in 2016 with a distance of 162.7 miles, receiving a gold team medal as part of Team GB, he also became the second fastest British runner in the history of the ancient Greek 153-mile Spartathlon, placing second in 2015.
Elsewhere, he has also set records for the longest distance run during a 24-hour ultramarathon in India and for running 521 miles on a treadmill over seven days, but Lawson is perhaps best known for running the fastest known time with robust supporting evidence from Land's End to John O'Groats – nine days, 21 hours, 14 minutes and two seconds in August 2020.
For Lawson, who is regarded as one of the greatest ultrarunners of all time, his only limits are in the mind.
Before embarking on his next challenge in an attempt to break the record for the shortest time taken to run the world-famous 630-mile South West Coast Path, the Brighton-born running star looked back on a career that has been littered with success and his support for his beloved Hammers…
Dan, where did it all begin for you as a runner, then?
“I ran a lot when I was younger. I’ve been running since I was about ten years old and have always loved it. I regularly did 10k races at the age of ten and eleven and ran 38 minutes 36 seconds at the age of 12. I also did a half-marathon at 12 years old in 1 hour 28 minutes. I stopped running for a while when I was 13, as I got into football, which I played for several years, but running was always my life and my passion, and it soon took over my life again.”
So, how did you end up becoming an ultrarunner?
“I never saw myself becoming an ultrarunner. I’ve always loved running, the freedom of it, but I was more of a 10k and half-marathon runner. At first, it started when I was a Community Coach at Brighton & Hove Albion’s Foundation and was part of Albion in the Community's Oscar programme in India.
“I set up a few coaching projects with underprivileged kids around the world, including from Mumbai down to Patnem Beach in Goa, and used running as a way to raise money for them, and from there I just found that I was really good at it, so then I started racing in the ultra-running circles, and the rest is history, really.”
How important is running in your life, then?
“I would say that running is my life, and I don’t know what I would do without it. I’m a better person when I run, and it becomes an escape for me. It gave me so much, and it still does to this day. For me, running definitely improves my confidence and makes me feel better about myself.
“It really supports my mental health. It’s my therapy, and I'm really lucky that I can race and I can compete against other people, and I can win things.”
Is there a particular race that stands out?
“Setting the fastest known time for Land's End to John O’Groats was a nice achievement, particularly because I beat my ultrarunning mentor’s (Andrew Rivett) record. Winning the IAU 24 Hour World Championship with Team GB was one of my proudest moments because, as a kid, watching the Olympics, you used to dream of singing the national anthem, and that was that real moment for me.
“The hardest race I've done is across the Gobi Desert in northern China and southern Mongolia, which is a 400-kilometre race, but you were just completely in the middle of nowhere and ran for 70 hours with no sleep. There was a lot of sleep deprivation and the hallucinations, and deep down, you've just got to have a strong kind of intrinsic motivation to finish the race, and it comes down to how much you want it.”
Tell us about your West Ham allegiance, then?
“My Dad is West Ham United through and through. He took me to my first game when I was four years old in the 1970s, and I remember the first game well. It makes me proud to be part of a generation of Hammers fans, and my Dad’s father and my Great-Granddad were at the White Horse Final at Wembley in 1923.
“I think the 1985/86 season is the one that stands out for me. We were brilliant that season with Tony Cottee and Frank McAvennie, and we could have won the league. I've got so many memories from Upton Park and have supported the Club for almost 50 years now.
“The best player I've ever seen is Paolo Di Canio. I've actually got a quote that he once said in an interview about why he wears short shorts tattooed on my thigh. He said he looks down at his legs and thinks, ‘Paolo, you are strong’, so bizarrely enough, on my thigh, it says ‘Paolo, you are strong’, so when I'm running, I can look down at my legs and I can think I am strong too!”