ONE MAN. 5 109KM.55 DAYS.

Running was always a punishment for William Goodge. As a semi-professional rugby player, 5km laps were reserved as an exhausting slap on the wrist for showing up late to practice.

- KIERAN LEGG

So, during the off-season, the last thing on his mind was lacing up and racking up the mileage.

"Yeah, running was definitely not something I did out of choice," says the UK-based runner, model and business owner.

But dark tides rushed in like a tidal wave, sweeping up Goodge's preconceptions in a foam-snarled flood. His mother, after five years of battling fiercely with non-Hodgkin lymphoma cancer, passed away. Goodge was just 23 at the time, "an interesting phase", he says. "You're old enough to take care of yourself, but mentally at least nowhere close to being able to process something like this."

He described his mom as his anchor, someone who-even in the last days of her life-faced each morning with a resolute certainty she was going to slay that unforgiving dragon known as cancer. And then, overnight, her unwavering support and no-nonsense guidance was stripped away. "I had the biggest white flag to wave," admits Goodge. "I had a free pass to basically fuck it all up. No one would begrudge me if I started drinking excessively, doing drugs... just to deal with it." But he'd watch his mom fight, he'd watch her do it three times as the cancer went into remission and then resurfaced. "When you watch someone close to you fighting for their life," he says. "There's no way you can throw your life away even for a brief period."

Whenever he's struggling on the road whether it's during his 55-day journey running across America or tackling a gruelling marathon at high altitudes-he goes back to this place in the aftermath of his mom's death.