Ultrarunner Will Goodge endured hallucinations and sleepless nights during 2,387-mile run across Australia in 35 days

CNN

a day ago

The first nine days, Will Goodge says, felt like a 'revolving nightmare,' an unending cycle of running and eating, running and eating until it was eventually time to sleep.
Except when he did try to close his eyes, sleep would rarely feel restorative, only feverish and restless. Hallucinations became an unpleasant and regular occurrence – 'kind of like you're dreaming but awake at the same time,' says Goodge – and a deep, aching sensation had settled into his muscles and bones.
At this point, the British influencer and endurance athlete had barely scratched the surface of his record-breaking attempt to run across Australia. Thousands of miles of tarmac still lay in front of him, and the torment felt like it would last forever.
'I was having nightmares about what I was doing, and I just felt trapped,' Goodge tells CNN Sports. 'It felt extremely claustrophobic. Even when I was out there, you're in a great expanse – there couldn't be more space around you. But for some reason, I felt very enclosed and the night seemed to drag out for a long time.'
On the 10th day of his record attempt, however, Goodge turned a corner. His body started to adapt, the nights began to feel shorter, and the roughly 68 miles he was running each day, though never easy, gradually began to feel more manageable.
By the end, Goodge had what he calls 'five good days' in a row. Having set off from Perth on Australia's western coast, he arrived at Sydney's Bondi Beach on May 19 to a crowd of hundreds, announcing that he had completed the 2,387 miles (3,841.4 kilometers) in 35 days.
That works out as 68.2 miles – around two and a half marathons – each day for more than a month.
If ratified, Goodge's feat would set the record for the fastest time running across Australia, smashing Chris Turnbull's 2023 time of 39 days, eight hours and one minute.
'It's pretty overwhelming,' Goodge says about completing the run. 'It's definitely ecstasy because you've obviously been through what you could call a traumatic experience, if you like.
'To get out the other side is like a big release of emotion. You're obviously extremely happy, you're emotional. I was tearing up a bit at the end, especially when I was doing my speech. There's just a huge weight that gets lifted off your shoulders … I was just overall confused, overwhelmed, happy, somewhat sad. It was a bit of everything.'
Goodge marked the end of his challenge by laying a bouquet of flowers on the Bondi Beach shoreline in memory of his mother, who passed away from Non-Hodgkin lymphoma – a form of cancer affecting the lymphatic system – in 2018.
He was raising money for three cancer charities in the UK, US and Australia, drawing inspiration from his mom's illness during the most arduous moments of the epic run.
'Seeing her fight cancer the way she did – and obviously I was with her through the end-of-life care – I have an ignorance to my own suffering,' says Goodge. 'I've seen someone go through worse, and the fact that I choose to do this kind of thing means that when it does get tough, I can think back to that or think about my mom.
'I have no reason to complain or whine or moan, just keep pushing forward. And I feel like she's with me there every step of the way.'
For Goodge, a typical day traversing Australia on foot would start at 4 a.m., his dad greeting him with cereal and a black coffee to fuel the early-morning miles. His coach would then give him a massage or apply strapping – 'my toes,' Goodge explains, 'were taking a hell of a beating' – before the day's first block of running while it was still dark.
From there, he would break up the distance ahead of him into roughly seven-mile blocks, pausing at the end of each one to refuel. That might be a high-calorie smoothie, cake, sandwiches, rice, pasta or yogurt with fruit and honey. At the end of the day, Goodge would aim to have shower and eat dinner with his crew, even indulging in a beer or two.
'It adds a layer of normality to what you're doing, rather than the madness of wake up, eat, run, eat, run, eat, run, shower, eat, sleep,' says Goodge.
And the beers? 'It's like a small celebration,' he adds. 'If you went out and ran 110, 111k (around 68.5 miles) on any other day, you'd probably do the same.'
Goodge describes the run as 'more of a mental battle' than a physical one, 'because your body's always going to fail doing stuff like that.' When it did fail, the results were often gruesome: huge blisters, an injured Achilles that inflamed to twice its size, right shin pain, and ankle issues.
In a recent Instagram post, he estimated that he lost more than 10 kilograms (22 pounds) in weight over the course of the run.
Several days on from finishing, Goodge says that his feet were still 'very, very swollen and not looking their best.' But his resilience – the thought of quitting never crossed his mind – coupled with the support from his crew and those following online all helped him to reach Sydney relatively unscathed.
A former rugby player and model, Goodge is hardly your typical ultrarunner. He's bigger and more muscular than most and posts photos of his glamorous lifestyle – think fancy dinners, swanky hotels and seaside resorts – to his 254,000 followers on Instagram.
His growing list of endurance achievements includes conquering the more than 3,000 miles across America between Los Angles and New York, circumnavigating Lake Como in Italy, and running the length of the UK from Land's End to John O'Groats.
He's attracted many supporters along the way – even legendary Kenyan marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge sent him a message during the trans-Australia attempt – but also his fair share of critics.
Specifically, some members of the ultrarunning community think that Goodge's endurance runs, his pace and the accompanying heart-rate data he posts online, are too good to be true.
The most vocal skeptic, runner and athletics writer Will Cockerell, even flew from the United Kingdom to the US during Goodge's run across America to check that the 31-year-old was completing the runs himself, not sharing the watch tracking his progress between members of his team.
The encounter and allegation from Cockerell, described as 'watch muling,' is captured on video, though Cockerell found no direct evidence of cheating.
Goodge has strenuously denied the claims, hitting out against 'self-proclaimed experts' who 'say they know everything about heart rate.' He also points to the reason that he's running in the first place.
'It's so intertwined with the passing of my mom and trying to make that more than just a sad story,' says Goodge. 'It kind of disgusts me that people would think I would cheat and use my mom's death as a reason to either build my profile, say I'm getting a record, or profit from it. I find that extremely disgusting and probably not everyone knows that.
'But also, I can appreciate the fact that people probably don't like me, which is totally fine. I definitely don't fit in the ultrarunner box. I don't kind of look like one, and I certainly don't act like one. So it's going to come with the territory, and that's fine.'
Another criticism Goodge often faces is that his performances in solo challenges seem superior compared to where he has placed at races – though that's something he says he hopes to address. To date, his best race result is an 11th-place finish at last year's Moab 240, a notorious 240-mile ultramarathon in Utah.
'I'm a better athlete now than I was then,' says Goodge. 'So maybe at some of these races … I could be looking for podiums, not just be that guy that's run across some countries and has one record. Be like: no, I'm a serious player in one of the real race formats as well. I think that would make me a more well-rounded athlete and taken maybe more seriously again.'
As for getting his trans Australia run ratified as a record, Goodge says that he and his team have compiled signed witness statements from the challenge, which they will submit to Guinness World Records along with the data uploaded to fitness tracking app Strava.
'There's a few boxes to tick,' he says. 'I feel like we've gone over and above what would usually be done for this kind of thing. I'm confident it will all go through.'
For now, Goodge has 'nothing major' on the horizon – perhaps a team event in Iceland this August, but no plans to run across more countries any time soon. If he does take on another, he says that the memory of his mother will motivate him above anything else.
'In these things, the connection (with her) feels really true and really deep,' adds Goodge. 'It's probably why I keep going back and doing it more.'