That saw Henry running up and down for 11 and a half hours , taking a few 30-minute breaks along the way to charge his iWatch and phone , which he was using to record the distance , and to fuel his body with baby potatoes , pasta , Energade and a few Red Bulls . He also took a couple of dips in the pool as an ice bath . “ It was a very long day – I had a playlist of one and a half hours , which I listened to about eight or nine times – but it proved massively successful . I set out to raise R50,000 for our staff , and in the end we raised R112,000 , which really made a difference in their lives !” he says . |
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Images : Courtesy Henry Cock |
Ready for More Running
In October , Henry duly joined the MAD2run team that ran to Cape Town over eight days , and says it was an intense but satisfying experience . “ We only heard that it was actually happening about a month before the run , and I had done no running since the passage run , so I only had a month to train for it . Also , we only had 18 runners instead of the originally planned 54 , and we ran in 8-hour shifts , so even though I had to take it a bit easier than some of the fitter runners , I still averaged about 20 to 25km a day .”
After the MAD run , Henry decided he wanted to tackle another running challenge , so he looked around for inspiration and found it in the Guinness World Records listing for most consecutive days completing a half marathon . South African Trish Eksteen tackled the same challenge last year and not only surpassed the existing women ’ s record of 74 consecutive days , but pushed on to reach 101 days . “ My research showed that the men ’ s record was 75 days , so in October I applied to the Guinness World Records to register my challenge , but didn ’ t hear anything back from them . I only finally heard in December that it had been accepted .”
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The problem was that Henry had thought his application was unsuccessful , so he had put running on the backburner and gone back to a lifestyle of socialising and drinking . He openly admits that he had been going through a tough time with his mental health for a number of years , and was drinking heavily to cope with everything . “ In that time my dad was diagnosed with cancer , which he fortunately recovered from , but my fiancée left me , and I was suffering from depression . I therefore embraced the Joburg culture of going out Friday nights and partying it up , then recovering the rest of the weekend .”
“ I had become aware of my own mental health issues in 2019 , when I began seeing a psychologist , and she has helped me through some truly difficult times . She continues to help me understand myself in a different way , to self-reflect and diagnose patterns in my behaviour and find ways to cope . The more I
Different moods during training runs to prepare for 133 consecutive half marathons !
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delved into my own personal experiences , the more I began to understand how important mental health is , and the more I learnt that it is still a very stigmatised and taboo subject . I used to struggle with that , and it took me months of therapy to work up the courage to admit to the people I cared about the most that I suffered from anxiety .”
Thanks to the journey he has walked since 2019 , Henry has become an outspoken champion of mental health , and he has made it his mission to debunk some of the false beliefs about mental health . “ Lack of education , cultural or religious stigmatism and patriarchal ideals have people ashamed to admit or seek help for their mental health issues , or believing that there is something wrong with them , that they are weak , or that they are a problem that has no solution . None of this is true . It takes great courage to speak out and recognise that you suffer from a mental disorder , and the more we can open the conversation surrounding mental health , the greater the understanding and empathy will be with those that suffer .”
Choosing a Cause to Support
With mental health very much on his mind , Henry decided that this was a cause he wanted to run for whilst chasing the World Record . He had initially wanted to run to raise funds for cancer research and treatment , having been inspired by the story of Canadian runner Terry Fox , who set out to run across Canada in 1980 . Terry lost his right leg to bone cancer in 1977 , but three years later he set out running with his prosthetic leg , running a marathon a day as he tried to convince all 24 million Canadians to each donate one dollar to this cause . Terry managed 143 consecutive days of running , covering over 5000km , when he was forced to stop due to the cancer spreading to his lungs . Sadly , he died nine months later , but his legacy lives on , and today over 800 million Canadian Dollars have been raised in his name for cancer research .
“ I decided I ’ d like to do something similar , so I came up with the idea of running around the coastline
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