It began simply enough. On Monday, former javelin thrower and Cheltenham Town youth footballer James Campbell — bored inside his house — sent out a simple photo of his modest backyard along with a promise that he’d run a marathon in it if he could get 10K retweets.
10,000 retweets & I’ll run a marathon in my back garden. It’s about 6 metres long pic.twitter.com/birrnVQ93Y
— James Campbell (@jcampbell0104) March 30, 2020
Perhaps not anticipating just how bored we all are inside our own homes and how much joy we’d get out of watching him try it, Campbell’s tweet achieved 10K that day en route to a grand total of 23.3K.
A number of sportsmen played a large part in making this happen, including Chelsea’s Michy Batshuayi.
Good luck bro https://t.co/0qssaMJB0q
— Michy Batshuayi (@mbatshuayi) March 30, 2020
To be clear, Campbell’s garden measures just 19 feet, requiring him to traverse it 7,000 times to log the required 26.2 miles of a marathon. But rather than just get it over with, the event turned into a massive live stream (nearly 70K views) that raised almost $25,000 for the National Health Service system in England.
Here’s the entire stream. Come for the pain of Campbell plodding around his backyard, stay for the brilliant commentary throughout the course of the four-hour video.
