Marathon man and dogs complete 200 runs in 200 days

Aaron Robinson is raising money for the charity he works for, Hope for Justice

Aaron Robinson wakes up at 3am every day and runs a marathon with his two dogs, River and Inca.

Then he does a full day's work.

The 40-year-old from east London has now completed 200 marathons in 200 days, far exceeding the official Guinness World Record for a man of 82 consecutive days of running a marathon. The official women's record is 106 consecutive days.

But Aaron has his sights on the unofficial record of 607 marathons in 607 days.

"The snooze has got a lot longer," he admits, since his alarm clock first went off on 18 December and he started running around Wanstead Park and Wanstead Flats.

"I never thought I'd get this far, so it feels really good to have finished it [the 200th marathon] but it just motivates me to keep on doing more and more and more.

"I'm greedy now so I want to carry on for as long as possible."

So what's the ultimate goal?

"Infinity!" he says. "I think if I set myself a number I'll just do that number. But I just want to run and push myself and do as many as we can.

"If the dogs want to run in the morning, then we'll run."

His two border collies, River, aged two, and Inca, one, show no sign of wanting to stop. Even after he paused his 200th marathon to talk, they were still demanding he throw a ball for them.

But are there days when he thinks "I just want a lie in?"

"I haven't had a day when I haven't thought that," he says. "But that's part of the challenge."

There was, though, one day when he came close to quitting.

"It was day 171. I did five miles and I thought, 'I've had enough of this, I can't do this any more.'"

He stopped and posted on his Strava that his record attempt was over.

"Then my dogs had a very stern word with me - words I couldn't possibly repeat before the watershed - and said, 'Get back out there and finish this.' So that's what we did and now we're still going. So it's thanks to my dogs that we're still doing this."

His routine involves going to bed at 7pm and waking at 3am so he can eat breakfast and complete his marathon before starting work.

"In order to do this you need to have self-discipline, four alarm clocks, and you need to have no social life," he says.

"You have to sacrifice a lot."

His motivation, he says, is partly to break records and partly to raise money for the charity he works for, Hope for Justice, which fights against modern-day slavery.

"I'm running for people who are in a far worse condition than me, who are literally forced into conditions that they can't escape from, like sexual slavery for example. The pain I'm in compared to them is nothing. I think about that a lot."

But he admits that afternoon meetings at work can be a struggle.

"Sometimes I've got endorphins running through my body and I feel great," he says. "And then other times I just feel a lot lower and I just have to get through the meetings."

He hasn't had to battle any injuries yet but has struggled with frequent stomach upsets during his runs.

"I was appreciative that at 3am or 4am no-one can see you if you suddenly need to go into a bush!" he says. "I had that for about 100 days and that was pretty horrible."

The main downside, he says, is it now takes him twice as long to hobble down the stairs to his front door.

"Every time I have a parcel delivered, they ring the doorbell but by the time I'm at the door, you get the red bit of paper saying 'sorry you were out'," he laughs. "I've missed a lot of parcels."

So for the foreseeable future, Aaron and his two dogs will continue to be a regular sight near his home in east London.

"It's not quite the Forrest Gump level where everyone is following you," he says. "In London you don't always know your neighbours so it's really nice to know people and talk to people."

And as for the dogs? "It's basically a five-hour walk for them," he says.

"I think they're living their best life."