THIS PROGRAMME CONTAINS VERY STRONG LANGUAGE
Eddie Izzard is an actor, comedian and a transvestite.
He is definitely not an athlete.
But on July 27th, 2009, at 47 years of age,
Eddie decided to go for a run, a very long run.
His aim, to cover over 1,000 brutal miles around the United Kingdom,
a marathon a day, six days a week.
Whatever happens, I will finish this and I will try my damnedest.
This is D-Day. This is it.
He's already run 700 miles and now he's on the final leg of his Sport Relief challenge
to complete another 462 miles of running hell.
Suffering extreme temperatures and putting his body under incredible
pressure, it's only a matter of time before it all breaks down.
Everything's too much now.
He's got to dig deeper than ever before
in a race to the finish, covering 17 marathons in 19 days.
Given the difficulty of the challenge,
if he makes this challenge, there's no doubt that he will become iconic.
Ten weeks ago, Eddie Izzard walked into
the British Olympic Medical Institute
with an insane idea to raise money for Sport Relief.
Sorry to go back, but as far as running's concerned, how much,
you know, running and training have you done up to this point?
I've done about two weeks training.
Is that right?
Is this wrong?
Am I doing things wrong?
Ignoring the experts, he set off from London.
Followed by a film crew on a rickshaw,
he was determined to run around the UK and do it his way.
He'd never run a marathon prior to this.
It is an incredibly tough challenge for a comedian transvestite.
His route took him west into Wales, but his inexperience soon showed.
Are you stopping for a sec? Yeah, I just want to get a Calippo.
He veered off course frequently. Now we're going off-road!
And kept finding any reason to have a break.Thank you very much.
Just days into his quest, his body began to crumble.
Aagh!All right there, yeah?
Riddled with blisters and injuries, only stubborn determination carried him on,
inspired by anyone mad enough to run with him.Eddie!Hello.How are you?
He kept on going through England and then up through Scotland.
Incredibly, he ran across Northern Ireland to Derry, Londonderry.
And I'm knackered!
On a rare day off, just for fun, he flew to Scotland
to climb the highest point in Edinburgh to drum up some support.
I just want to keep going. I'm a relentless idiot.
He has completed 26 gruelling marathons, the equivalent distance from London to Milan.
Now this is his last leg of his enormous running adventure.
That tends to help. The front page.
Never been that in my life.
Eddie's in Glasgow, starting his 27th marathon.
Running through the city, he receives lots of encouragement.
Evening.
Scotland is supporting his achievement.
CAR HORN HONKS
Beginning to realise, oh, he is really doing this!
I think for a long time, people thought,
"He's talking about it, but he's not actually doing it."
THEY CHEER
See you!Bye!
But Eddie can't celebrate yet.
He's on a tight schedule to get to the finish in time.
He's determined to run 17 marathons, 462 miles, in just 19 days.
His route will take him through Edinburgh
and south through the east of England,
until he finally reaches the finish, Trafalgar Square.
And then they'll be not one person
in the whole United Kingdom who doesn't know.
Eddie's a man on a mission to raise awareness for Sport Relief
and help people that live in underprivileged areas.
Now you see, these estates here, this is where Sport Relief can help.
Sometimes those flats can look quite tough.
An hour into his marathon,
Eddie runs through the outskirts of Glasgow.
The area reminds him of places he used to live and work.
Yeah, my brother lived in one
and, er...yeah, you know.
I spent a long period of my life trying to get somewhere
before I got anywhere.
CAR HORN HONKS
And my sort of tough part of my thing was in the '80s.
Tough part of my life, where I couldn't get anything going.
Eddie spent years struggling to become successful
as a stand-up performer.
On his route, three marathons away, is Edinburgh, where his career was born.
It's also somewhere he's keen to go back and revisit.
And the slow-motion finish!
Sprint finish!
Tired and cold, he completes another two marathons
about ten miles away from the Scottish capital.
HE SNORES
He's going out tonight to enjoy the Fringe Festival.
He's snoring!
But with 15 marathons left to run, it looks like he needs the rest
to last the distance.
So how are you feeling today, Eddie?
Er, shattered.
It's 9am, and Eddie arrives late to start his 29th marathon.
Up till now, he has kept to a strict routine of starting early
to give himself a fighting chance of completing his run,
but today, this seems to have gone out the window.
I need more sleep.
I think it's really tough.
He's kind of relaxed a bit and enjoyed himself and had a bit of
a normal life, rather than sort of completely resting.
Just meeting up with people...
The Festival and everything. One was late up.
It seems Eddie has partied too much at the Festival
and he's in no condition to run a marathon,
let alone complete another 15 of his challenge.
Eddie's moving slowly.
He'll need all the help he can get to carry him through the day.
And after an hour, help arrives.
First a runner, then a special guest.
Hi.I'll wave you past. Just waving.
I know. Come in.How are you doing?
How are you? Good to see you.Ah!
Do you do a lot of running? I do run, yeah.
I'm not a proper runner, but now I suppose I am!You are.
Eddie!Which way are you going?
You're going the wrong way!
After 20 minutes, the pace has increased,
but Denise seems to be having a few problems.
You want water, then, guys?Er...
First, she needs a drink.
He's unlocking the shop for me! Bless him.
About 1.30...Thank you so much.
Soon after, she starts to struggle with her outfit.
This T-shirt...I thought it was going to be long.
If I get a little bit of a camel toe...
Always best to avoid that.
Denise understands Eddie's challenge more than most.
Last year, she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief,
helping to raise £3.5 million.
What keeps you going, though?
These guys are filming it, so I can't pull out.
It's going to be too embarrassing.
The fact that I thought I could do it in the first place.
Have you cried?
I've sort of wanted to and then I thought,
"Well, I'm just feeling sorry for myself.
"I am being a kid." I sort of rationalise myself out of it.
But it was... You are allowed the odd tear.
Once my mother died... CAR HONKS
I sort of locked my emotions up.
But actually, no, it was after I went to boarding school and
realised that crying equals losing, so I never cried again.Really?
How about when you finish this run?
No. Surely, that's going to get to you.
You're going to be overwhelmed with emotion.I don't know. I might.
Well done!
I stopped crying at 11, but I restarted at 19,
when I realised I was dead inside.
So I had to rip that open.
It seems personal tragedies and hardship through his life have
given him a fierce determination to succeed,
as well as to keep running.
Eddie's keen to revisit the city centre two miles away.
This is somewhere he struggled at the start of his career,
street performing to earn a living.
But to get there, Eddie will have to go off-route
and run along the city centre's congested pavements.
Is it hell to drive this?
No, it's easy. It's like driving through a forest.
He's losing valuable time to complete his marathon, but Eddie thinks it's
worth it, as he's keen to see old friends and have an ice cream.
Good to see you, pal.
That's part of my culture.
Health and safety.
Thank you very much.
Before he made it as a stand-up, he spent five years on the street,
scraping to make a living.
It was very hard being a street performer.
It is for them now.
You get treated quite badly.
You get treated like you're begging.
But we're doing performances.
People made really good money, but...
you know, huge crowds, but you would still be treated
like beggars and asked to moved on.
There are some who remember his raw talent.
Eddie!What?
Ten seconds, look me in the eye!
My name is Tiberius.
I started doing this because you did.
APPLAUSE
Are you serious about that?
I'm dead serious.
Can you still get out of a straitjacket?
I didn't do a straitjacket. I used to do manacles.
You ever done a straitjacket?
No.Do you want to try?No.
LAUGHTER
Is that what you're doing?
Yes. We'll put you in it, if you want.I couldn't.
Who wants to see Eddie get out of a straitjacket?
CHEERING
Eddie hasn't got time to perform.
It's 3pm, and he's still got 18 miles to go.
This could turn out to be his longest marathon yet,
unless he picks up his pace.
But yet again, he's stuck,
this time on the Royal Mile.
It's like running through treacle.
I did my first ever street show just there. Round the back.
Eddie's spent five hours enjoying the sights of Edinburgh,
losing all focus on his marathon, but then a friend joins him,
hoping to motivate him for a few miles.
How you doing, buddy?
You don't want to run all of it, just a bit?
I'm coming along to remind people how hard it is.Right.
I know they'll be thinking, "This looks quite straightforward.
"He's smiling, he's chatting."
I'm going to show what the average man suffers.So you're the control?
I haven't run for six years. Really?I'm 52 years old.
ICE CREAM VAN PLAYS THEME FROM CHARIOTS OF FIRE
On cue!
That's marvellous!Cornets Of Fire.
Eddie and Frank Skinner are good friends.
They started performing about the same time.
You're doing brilliantly. This is a hill!I know.
They run out of the city and Eddie is beginning to eat up the miles.
I thought I'd do about 100 yards but, you see,
your charisma is dragging me on.
This is like Eddie's career.
"I'm doing big gigs in England. I have to make it in America.
"I have to be a film star."
Every day, another marathon.
You're a fearless man, Eddie.
I love you for that.
Frank completes seven miles with Eddie,
running further than he ever intended.
I feel like I have gone to the well of Eddie Izzard
and come back refreshed.
Eddie and some fellow runners
are left to complete the remaining 11 miles.
But they face a monstrous hill
and a struggle to the finish before nightfall.
The longer he's out running, the more he'll suffer tomorrow.
After covering just two miles, Eddie has to stop.
He's hit the wall.
Ah, I'm losing it again.
He's consumed with self-doubt, triggered by a miscalculation
of how many miles he's got until the finish.
The psychological thing is, I felt I was coming to the end and seeing as
I've put another six miles on to it, I've got depressed.
He has to come to terms
with running another six miles more than he thought.
He's feeling down, but he's getting there.
That's all that matters.
One step at a time.
Soon he starts lagging behind and retreating into his shell.
It's OK. Don't worry about me.
Not even the support of the other runners is helping him.
Everything's too much now.
There's one big hill to finish.
It's almost dark and the temperature has dropped.
Eddie pushes through the pain barrier
to finish his 29th marathon in 11 hours.
But it's come at a price. He's mentally and physically exhausted
and in desperate need of rest.
The next few days will require a monumental effort from Eddie.
He now faces four marathons through the same lonely,
mountainous landscape before he reaches his next city, Newcastle.
I just know that over the top of that hill,
there's going to be another down,
then another up, then another down.
I'm just too tired.
I'd better go.
Even more troubling for Eddie is the brutal fact he's got another
400 miles of his challenge to complete in just 16 days.
Both the press and the public will be waiting,
and he doesn't want to let them down.
It means running a gruelling 14 marathons to the finish.
After two hours of running,
he arrives at one of the few towns en route.
Well, done, Eddie.Thank you. On you go!Cheers!
The ice cream van has already arrived, drawing in the crowds
and doing a roaring trade, giving out free ice cream for donations.
Is this the usual suspects?
Where's the captain? There's the captain.
Cheers.All the best!Thank you.
Has he got a castle?
Turrets and everything.
The Captain lives in a 16th-century castle just out of town.
The castle, aye, we shall storm it.
And Eddie seizes the opportunity to take a break and snoop around.
Would you like to have a quick look inside?Yeah.
One of the last people who swept up here was her majesty, the Queen.
A really big moment. She was just hanging out?
He seems to have forgotten he's suffering from exhaustion,
and that he's only five miles into his marathon.
That's a blunderbuss there. For house coach.
He has a lifelong fascination for anything military
and would rather have a guided tour.
I wanted to join the army.
In a way, this was like, "Could I have joined the army?
"Could I have made it in the army?"
Napoleon?Yes. Napoleon surrendered to an ancestor of mine.
Some of those walls are 13-feet thick.
Really?After 40 minutes, he's only halfway round the house
and it seems he could be here all day.
I think, Eddie, it's great that you're here.
I think that he would have reached a very senior rank in
the army, cos he's a very talented, clever man
and the fact he puts on a dress would go down extremely well.
The army, on many occasions, has its own comedy acts
in front of their own regiment.
Well, Captain, thank you.
OK.Appreciate it.Good man.
I salute him.
Finally, Eddie leaves, but his eventful day continues.
It's not long before he meets another member of the public
with an interesting and inspiring story.
When you're in a wheelchair,
you're restricted to nice, flat, boring, level ground and pavements.
Can you go off-road in those? Yeah, yeah. That's why I got this.
It's all about going off-road and exploring and stuff.
And you heard I was doing this? I follow your Twitter.Right.
So I thought,
"I'll come out and help you along a bit
"on the last couple of miles if you're getting tired."
No, it's great.
Andy, a soldier, lost the use of his legs
in a mountain-climbing accident, after returning from Iraq.
He has covered 1,000 miles - the length of Britain - on his hand cycle.
You can do anything you want to do.
It just takes a lot of ingenuity,
normally some kind of specialist equipment,
and a lot of stubbornness,
but you can still go out and you can still do
anything you want to do.
Sooner than he'd like, he's back on his own and, with no towns en route
and little sign of life till Newcastle,
the last 15 miles will be a lonely battle.
It's difficult for Eddie,
because he has visions of popping off to see people.
What he doesn't understand is that he will get to a period of
time during this challenge where he can't lift his feet off the ground,
where he is so miserable
about having to run, that he simply will not want to be out there.
Really, what my job is to do, and the team I've handpicked around him,
is to keep him focused, keep one foot moving in front of the other.
The support team are waiting for Eddie at the finish, cooking him a steak dinner.
But seven miles away, steak's the last thing on his mind.
There are so many things that can go wrong
with ultra-endurance events like this.
There's a huge number of psychological problems that these guys pick up,
to the point where they become so fatigued, they become delirious.
After ten hours of running, Eddie looks a broken man,
struggling to survive this tortuous marathon.
You see them drifting off the road. They do strange things.
Eddie finishes in 11 hours. He's a physical wreck.
Yeah, we've got steak! Have you got steak?
How would you like it cooked? Just stick it in my mouth.
After already running 800 miles of his challenge,
it seems there's no way he can keep up this gruelling schedule
to make it to London in time.
But he gets up and does it all over again.
He needs to survive another 13 marathons of running hell.
Alone all day, he crosses into England, taking
time out to run Hadrian's Wall, conquering yet another marathon.
I mustgo and get drunk.
But just ten minutes into running his 32nd marathon,
he's distracted by something peculiar at the side of the road.
It's a rather...
They're moles.They're moles? They're moles.
It kind of looks like, "I'm Spartacus." "No, I'm Spartacus."
And they ended up being crucified when they fought against the Romans.
I don't know why. All hung up by their little sensitive noses.
It's to scare off other moles who are trying to break through the wire
and take over the farm.
Cos some moles are running farms now.
And they have loudspeakers and they go -
HE MUMBLES
"Bring us more milk and cash."
I don't know!
It's a bit grisly, isn't it?
Yeah. The only way I can circumvent it is by not being that
attached to moles, but they look like they've had a tough time.Yeah.
After running alone for so long, he's pleased to be joined by a fellow runner.
But he'll need all the support he can get, as the weather has deteriorated
and the temperature has dropped to almost freezing.
For fuck's sake, stop raining.
Bloody miserable.
I'm fed up with it. My legs are just like lead.
I don't quite understand why.
After struggling through difficult terrain, Eddie's low on energy,
but this has plagued him throughout his challenge.
He's been force-feeding himself a high-carb diet, but it seems to be doing more harm than good.
Eddie interpreted the instruction
that he had to take in a lot of calories to be that
he had to eat a lot of food
and just sit there in agony. And I couldn't believe that
that's what they told him to do.
But because he has it in his head,
you can't tell him that that's maybe not the best idea.
Just when Eddie's on his last legs, a fan arrives out of nowhere.
Jelly babies!
She's got some jelly babies.
You might not want any, but we've come all this way
to bring you some jelly babies to keep you going.Thank you.
You're doing a bloody brilliant job.
We had to come and see you doing it,
because we didn't believe you were doing it.
After six hours of battling the elements, the rain finally stops
and Eddie's running alone, but now he's got a new problem.
I'm thinking the gels might be giving me wind.
I've got strange stuff going on in my stomach.
Or it could be the porridge.
It looks like his extreme diet,
supplemented by a concoction of porridge,
ice cream and running gels is too much for his body.
Things started sloshing around
as if I'd drunk too much or like I'm a washing machine.
Eddie struggles to the finish.
But he's worried his eating habits might be damaging his
hopes of completing the remaining 11 marathons.
Back at the hotel, he's joined by Greg Whyte, his trainer,
and running expert Steve Cram, keen to help him.
I'm not sure what it is that I'm putting in it that's making it...
The fact is that Eddie is expending a huge number of calories.
He's actually burning more than he can consume.
Eddie's been trying to combat his negative energy by consuming carbs,
including dozens of special gels,
which he thinks might be playing havoc with his bodily functions.
So I'm just tearing through gels now.250 cals a gel?
250 cals a gel. Does that...
because my internal things...
I'm going to the loo a lot.
I pee a lot.
I pee with abandon.
You've just got to find that middle ground.
What you don't want to do is pee all the time.
Cos I feel like a dog. I'm marking the United Kingdom.
That's a hell of a scent, all that carbohydrate.
Greg needs to find a diet that suits Eddie
without messing with his insides to get
into London on schedule, on time, covering 11 marathons in 12 days.
Yesterday it was wet and cold.
Today it's wet and it's cold.
The upshot of yesterday's conversation
is that a number of people have said to me is what you are trying to do
is mass eat in a single sitting.
You've got an opportunity to do this grazing-type approach.
When do I graze, then? I mean, right now, for example.
You've got a seven-till-nine window
where you could graze and probably take in the same number of calories
over a two-hour period.
Exhausted from his failing diet, Eddie needs motivation.
So Greg and injured Olympian Steve Cram
join to inspire him for the final push to London.
Imagine Eddie is a battery.
At the moment he has basically taken just about
all the energy out of that battery.
And what we're constantly doing is just topping up the energy
in preparation for tomorrow's marathon.
What we're not doing is we're not recharging the battery.
It's Greg's job to keep Eddie moving,
but after three hours he'd rather stop at the Angel of the North,
although it's hardly the weather for sightseeing.
What do you mean "wind"?
It's a lovely day, this, for about November.
A lot of athletes couldn't do it, because they're too focused.
You've got to spend too much time hanging round,
doing pictures and things,
whereas athletes will always want to stick to the schedule.
Eddie is acting like a tourist
and Greg is becoming increasingly frustrated by his lack of focus.
The longer we stay here, the more darkness we have to run into,
and dark, windy and rainy is just utter misery.
After eight hours, Eddie and Greg
make it to Durham.Warmth!
And at last, the sun comes out.
Thanks.You're doing a fantastic job.
Offering final words of wisdom, Greg sees it as a good place to leave.
What people do is they get closer and closer and think,
"I'll just leave it." And then their foot falls off.
I haven't been doing that. My problem is dawdling.
True to form, Eddie doesn't listen to Greg's advice to stay focused.
With five miles before the finish,
he's feeling peckish and stops to get a bite to eat.
Let's take a left.
Head to the drive-in, fast-food place, Mr Ted, sir.
THEY SCREAM
Horny?
"Honk if you're horny."
Well, have you tried it? Does it work?Yeah.
And they do honk?Yeah.
And you've got a lot of spare time.
Yeah.All right.
Yeah, one hamburger and fries and... One veggie burger.
One veggie burger. Two veggie burgers.
Thank you. Well, I'm nothing if not spontaneous.
Hello.£5.95, then.
£5.95. Who's got the cash?
Thanks, Rach.Bye.
When we get to Ferryhill, we'll eat like kings!
Are you racing?Whoo!Come on!
We're racing, we're racing! Come on!
We're down to three.
It's down to two.
You're doing brilliantly.
You're doing six miles an hour uphill.
Ican't usually run.You can today.
Right, I'm stopping.All right.
I think she won that.
I wasn't expecting anyone to make it.
Eddie has completed 33 marathons in 40 days, a phenomenal achievement,
made all the more surprising by his stubborn refusal
to follow expert advice and do the challenge his way.
That's the ice, baby.
His success could be in part due to the tortuous nightly ritual of a 15-minute ice bath after running.
All ice baths are very good.
Great athletes, you know, do ice baths.
So you can feel like a great athlete just by having an ice bath!
10.8.
This freezing ice bath will help his muscles recover,
giving him a fighting chance of surviving the last ten marathons,
to make a difference for Sport Relief.
Come on, Eddie, love!
Apparently, it's good.
Some people don't do it but, apparently, it's good for you.
Everest moment!
Everest! First Everest!
A beautiful way to see your country. Life in the raw,
when you're on foot. You miss so much in a vehicle.
It's great, people are finding they're giving money.
It's an adventure.
HE GASPS
Do you always last the distance?
No, a few times I've got out...
without getting too cold.
I don't know why. Sometimes it's colder than others.
But this night,
I would have got out.
I would have got out,
but you're here. So I can't get out.
I've just decided, I think I might have a bit of energy in the tank,
so I'm going to pick the speed up.
Come on, motherfucker!
HE PANTS
Cake! Fucking move!
Oh, God!
Weee!
Pull the plug out. I'm trying to hold on to something.
Hello.Hello. Cheers. Cheers.
I just did over 22.5 miles
and I only came out to run about three miles,
then got caught along on the whole adventure.
Five more to go. Five more marathons. Only five more! A bagatelle.
Eddie has run five marathons since Newcastle
and he's got five more to go.
He's racing to the finish,
as he's told the press he'll be in London in just six days.
But before he continues his challenge, he wants to visit
a Sport Relief project to see how the money raised will help.
Hello, hello.Hello. How are you?
I'm Eddie. Nice to meet you. I'm Eddie.
You're Eddie? Very good people.
Come and sit down.I won't sit down.
I'm Colin.
Colin and Edward have Alzheimer's, a form of dementia which affects
over 400,000 people in the UK.
Some individuals can suffer from memory loss and problems with communication.
A lot of people have always thought it's an older person's disease.
Eddie was only 51 when he got diagnosed.
Eddie Izzard is just four years younger,
and while he's strong enough to run round the UK,
Edward struggles to live a normal life.
I can't read a clock now.
Me writing's gone,
believe it or not. Erm, I'm just hoping me speech doesn't.
Spells that are good and spells that are bad?Yeah, yeah.
It's a pain in't neck.
It's boredom that gets you.
Yeah.Cos you're used to working. You can't get a job.
Yeah, I thought my world had ended.
Can you imagine it?
You'll never work again.
I've worked all me life.
The illness took away Edward's independence,
but the Alzheimer's Society,
funded by Sport Relief, has given him advice and support.
It also provides extra help for his wife Sue,
taking them on trips and holidays.
You're looking at each all the time. You end up bonkers.
So I go down there and it gives her a rest.
It gives me one as well.
It's the talking about it. I'm a transvestite.
I started talking about it and people went, "He can't be..."
It's a different thing, but it's the talking about it. Being open.
If you can help some of the others that's a bit worse,
cos that's what we do. We look after each other.
I'm glad you're fighting.
It's very nice to meet you.
Don't you wear your legs off. No, I won't.
See you!
It's tough and...
But he's fighting. Obviously, he's a fighter,
as they all are and have to be.
That's funny, is that.
That's the way to approach it. It's the only way to approach it.
Inspired by the meeting, Eddie's more focused on his challenge than ever.
He's not content to run five marathons in six days.
He sets himself a new challenge
of completing the last day's marathon in his fastest-ever time,
hoping to raise more money in the process.
I'm running at the speed you can't talk.
This is...
about six, seven miles an hour. This would be my day off, normally.
So I've never done this many marathons in a row.
What I need to do today, and tomorrow and the next day
and for the last five of these, is do not think about the end, really.
I've just got to go on and on and on.
Eddie's running his eighth marathon in eight days.
He's putting real pressure on his body,
but he has to keep going to finish his challenge in time.
To get his personal best, he's not going to stop for anyone.
...miles yesterday.
Oh.And joined your homepageto see where you were running.Excellent.
Yeah, I think I'm being interviewed by you.This is The Politics Show.
The Politics Show, really?Yeah.
Excellent, excellent.Yeah.
So, we want to know, Eddie, how it's going for you?
Well, I think that it's going very well for me.
It's a loo day. National Loo Day.
Even going to the toilet is a quick affair, preferring
to take his rickshaw with him whenever he needs to go.
Just a quick loo stop.
There was a bit of traffic. It's cleared now.
Don't hit anyone, Ted. "Now, now! Kick it! Gun it!"
The more Eddie runs, the stronger he seems to become.
It seems nothing can stop him now.
Sorry, Eddie.That's OK.
Something's just gone.
Were we crowding you? No, no, just...
If something goes, I have to stop, otherwise...
I'll never...
It's OK. Things go.
They come back.
Eddie's hurt his ankle and the more he runs on it,
the worse it seems to get.
Ah, fuck!
No, that's not good.Oh, no!
If this happens on the final day, then...
Eventually, he can no longer continue
and calls the support team to take a closer look.
I can put a compression bandage around it for you to run with,
but till the checkpoint, I want you to walk to the checkpoint, OK?
To the checkpoint? That's ten miles.
I know. I want you to walk to it.
If you carry on running, you might not even make it to the last day.
Is it worth it, really?
You think it's that serious then? Yeah.
Because if that goes, if that completely ruptures, that's it.
You won't even be doing your tour, cos you'll be on crutches.
We've got five more marathons to go - only five more to go!
But suddenly five more marathons with your ankle not working
becomes a massive amount.
The news is a shock. It's worse than he could have imagined.
Then it will counteract on to the other leg.
It's just best if you try not to...
Try and keep left, OK? Yep. All right.
That's a good pace, though.
OK. Thanks.
Until now, Eddie has refused to walk,
preferring to run at all costs.
But knowing his dream of completing his challenge is in jeopardy,
he has to finally give in.
So now I'm a little bit anxious, actually.
Well, I'll finish, I'll finish. Come hell or high water, I'll finish.
I'm not giving up now.
If he doesn't listen
to the advice that we give and we don't do it properly now,
he could end up with that becoming a tear and going further
and becoming a rupture.
If that happens, that's it. Eddie stops at 39 marathons.
Walking doesn't come naturally to Eddie
and after eight hours since his marathon began,
he's just over halfway through.
Frustrating.
Slow.
You've got to really push it just to get four miles an hour.
Jo, the sports therapist, tries to give him some encouragement.
There's a kind of anger in there.
I'm going, "Come on!"
I've got two more marathons before...
Not even a day off, but a day of not running.
That's nothing. It's only like 50 miles.
Think how many you've done.
He said to me, actually, in the van,
"Oh, I've done 38 marathons and nothing's happened. So I kind of thought I was a bit invincible."
But we've really shocked him into thinking,
"No, I am still a human and I have still got work to do."
A good friend of Eddie's joins him on the run.
The support team hope this will give Eddie the motivation he needs
to complete the marathon.
Eddie's had to slow down to a walking pace today,
which is quite demoralising for everyone.
Eddie has run over 1,000 miles around the country,
but this is the biggest setback he's faced.
He knows if he can't run again, his chance of completing his
challenge and getting to London in time is over.
When you're running, at least you feel like you're moving.
When you're walking along, even though you're chatting,
you look back and you've only gone a couple of hundred yards.
At this pace, he's in for a long night.
It'll take at least another four hours to get to Leicester.
Eddie's late. It's getting late. It's going to be our latest finish.
And when it's dark, it makes it so much harder to stay awake.
I feel really sorry for Eddie,
cos he's got a lot of miles to cover,
so he has to do a lot of running or walking.
But he can only walk at, like, 3.7 miles an hour, I think.Yeah.
But after 12 hours, Eddie emerges out of the darkness.
He's made it to Leicester against the odds.
I've decided to test it to see if it will work for tomorrow.
Thing is, if it doesn't work, I'm screwed.
He promised himself he would run round the UK and he cannot bear
to walk any more, risking his health and the whole challenge.
Luckily, he's finished unscathed.
Only by running tomorrow will he know if his body will get him to the end.
I'm worried about being scared.
I'm scared of being scared.
If I start thinking, "This is going to be a problem," it could make it a problem.
He cautiously runs out of Leicester.
He knows if he's not careful, any step could be his last.
If I get it so I can't do the last day,
I'll lose it.
It's just, to go all the way round and not be able to finish
is, um...I just don't want to consider that.
Eddie's still under pressure to reach the finish.
He needs to run 100 miles in five days,
but his problems are soon put into perspective
when he's joined by a fellow adventurer.
The ankle's a bit weird.
You look terrific and you do so much good. You're the best.
You do more than if someone who
wasn't also funny and cheerful did it, because you spread the light.
Wow! Wow! You went round the bloody world!
That's right, but I was officially certifiable.
63-year-old Rosie Swale-Pope is a legend in ultra-marathon circles.
She spent five years running 20,000 miles around the world.
I did it on a very low budget.
My husband had just died and I had not the heart
to go and see people and say, "Would you like to sponsor me?"
So I just used my savings, rent from the house and a small book advance.
And I just went and I figured I could just sleep in ditches.
I think the hardest thing was the fear of freezing to death.
Many times in Siberia and in Alaska, you would be so frightened,
your heart would be thumping just to prevent yourself going to sleep.
Right.Cos you think you might never wake up.
The thing that keeps me going is the idea that I'm not going to stop
and I decided that at the beginning, like you did.
That's a beautiful answer.
My heart goes out to Eddie because of what he's going through.
It's just that he knows that he's doing it for a reason,
and I believe that Eddie's like me,
that if you're just doing it for your own personal self,
about how smart you'd be if you achieve a challenge, that's nothing.
Think of those children in Africa.
They've got everything that God gave them,
but nothing that people gave them.
You do taste life with a much more real edge.
It's fun and an adventure and tough and raises money.
It hits a number of buttons for me.
Number 40!
Whoo!The drama.
The new hairstyle.
Having survived a day of running with no further injury, Eddie throws
caution to the wind to train for his personal best on the last day.
This is where the race really begins.
If he's hoping to do
six or seven miles an hour all the way through London,
he's got to find out if he can do it, you know?
If he tries to run five miles an hour, six miles an hour, now
and goes over on it slightly, that's it.
Game over.
Do you know which way you're going, Ted?
Third exit! Third exit!
Yeah.
If he's going to record a fast time, he can't stop for anything,
but it's a scorching day,
so he'll have to get lots of drinks on the run.
Not only will he become dehydrated,
he could be at the risk of developing heatstroke,
bad dehydration that would have to be sent to hospital
to be on a saline drip.
If things hurt, I've just got to keep going,
even if it starts ripping my feet up.
I've got to try and get my best time.
Shit! Help!
However, it's not long before Eddie's body begins to break down again.
Stop.
But he just ignores it and runs through the pain.
The minute that he admits to himself that this is complete madness
and he'll never do it,
the minute he allows himself to believe that, then he's had it.
He has to keep that real belief
and that is how he's been throughout his career.
Everything that he does, he has the belief.
It's all go here.
This is slowing down my speed.
Eddie makes another marathon in one piece.
The end of the 41st marathon.
Thank you.
But he's still a long way off his goal of finishing in five hours.
Stop the clock!
He ran in over six.
Tomorrow's it.
Try and beat five hours.
Not terribly fast for normal marathon runners,
but for me, with no energy
and an exhausted body,
that'll be good enough.
On his penultimate day, Eddie is joined by Kim, a sports specialist,
on hand in case an injury occurs.
Woo-hoo! M25!
We're back!
Every runner strives
for a personal best and he is a runner now,
so he's going to want that personal best
to finish this tour on a high.
It's a good sign, that's what I think.
Eddie's run a strong marathon, feeling physically and
psychologically ready for tomorrow's race to the finish.
I've got some sort of pain around here.
But just three miles from the end, all that changes.
I've got a pain up here.
It seems different.
It doesn't seem like a good area to have a pain.
Just there. Has it gone away again now?
Ish.Ish? OK.
I think it's probably best if we walk for the next while.
Kim has real concerns over Eddie's heart.
After almost 42 marathons in 50 days,
he has pushed his body to its limits.
This latest setback
will only add to the pressure of his final run.
I have had pains there before.
But it actually hurts to do that.
It doesn't hurt so much on that side.
I think an ice cream would make it better.
It's the final day of Eddie's incredible journey.
He'll be joined on his run by British Olympians and his trainer Greg Whyte.
Greg is worried that his attempt to run a personal best of under five hours
will be too much for his body to handle.
A 47-year-old with chest pain. There is a level of concern.
We want to make sure that he's OK.
This is the fastest marathon I've ever run in my life.
This is one I can't really fail.
This one we're trying to get the most publicity to raise the money.
This one I have to get in in five hours,
so I can't actually muck it up.
Okey-dokey. How do the legs feel, good?
Yeah, legs are OK.
I guess two things, really, what my job is today.
Number one is performance, is to make sure that
he doesn't get overexcited and actually go out too hard.
We're going too fast. We've actually blown a speed camera already.
Eddie will be followed by three rickshaws,
which will attempt to film the race.
That's number three! That's Thunderbird Three.
26 miles is still a long way.
The fact that he's already done 42 marathons
doesn't make any difference
and obviously, the heart is a real concern,
if there is a problem there.
Take it a little faster?
Think of yourself like a metronome, doof-doof-doof. That rhythm.
And just keep it moving.
I'm very keyed-up at the moment
and I have told people I'm going to do it, so it's out there.
The press are lined up there, so to get the most publicity, I can't be late.
Hundreds of people are waiting for Eddie at Trafalgar Square
and they're expecting a glorious finish.
But 40 minutes in, the streets become congested.
CAR HORNS HONK
Hear that noise?
I don't know if that's good or bad.
And they're building up an impatient queue of traffic behind them.
I'm worried about this.
Just focus on what you're doing. Think about that metronome.
Everybody else can worry about the traffic.
HORN BLARES
If you do a normal marathon, the roads are blocked off,
there's no traffic, it's just runners and you're not even on the kerb.
Can you do this pavement?
You have to watch the kerb.
We're come down the pavement to relieve the traffic a bit.
It's very, very tight.
Just over six miles an hour.
We're up on pace and our timing's looking good.
As the weather takes a turn for the worse, he loses the support of the Olympic pace-setters.
Eddie, it's been a real pleasure.
All the very, very best. Thank you, man.
It's got to be the worst day we've had.
It's so bad, and he won't put a jacket on.
He's going to get bloody hypothermia.
Battling through the rain, visibility is low
and it's terrifying running at speeds across the roads.
The streets aren't cleared.
He has to negotiate everything that goes on in London.
SIREN WAILS
After ten miles, Eddie arrives at a major intersection,
a maze of roads, and no clear route through.
OK. We're going down there, behind these buses.
Behind the buses!
Traffic again!
VOICE COMES THROUGH RADIO: Ted, can you hear me?
We're on a big dual carriageway, over.
Agh, it's a mess.
Stay where you are.
We're not quite sure if this is the right route or not.
It was rather worrying at that point.
We went down the wrong direction and I felt it was going wrong,
so I had to double back.
HE WHISTLES
There?
Is it that way? OK.
Right, this way, guys.
I felt the pace was going, so I belted off.
The cameras got stuck in traffic.
The traffic jam costs Eddie precious time
and he's now down to just one rickshaw.
It tries to give chase on the pavement.
My time went right down.
I'm right on the edge of doing a five-hour marathon.
When you challenge the body with 43 consecutive marathons,
things do start to go wrong.
My stomach is not feeling great.
13 miles in, Eddie has to stop. Constant running is playing havoc with his innards.
Any way I can use your loo?
As Eddie starts to fall apart, so does the last remaining rickshaw.
Axle's snapped.
I'm afraid that rickshaw is out of the game.
By going off-road, the rickshaw's wheel has fallen off.
Until help arrives, Eddie is running on his own.
I didn't know what was going on. I just remember,
"Keep going. I have to keep this pace up.
"Everyone has to find me."
Much of the time that he's spent doing this challenge has been
in the middle of nowhere, followed by you guys, in your rickshaw.
Now there's a huge amount of media that's on it
and he's said he's going to run a particular time
and that means he's got to hit that target. The pressure is on him.
The rickshaw is fixed and the film crew find Eddie waiting
at the new Olympic stadium in Stratford.
He didn't want to go further without the crew.
Well, look at it. There it is.
That whole place up there, regeneration.
We've got to go for it. Sometimes you just have to go for it.
And now I have to run like buggery.
The race is on.
By waiting, he might have lost his chance of breaking five hours.
He now has to push himself as hard as he can to make it in time.
So this is the last six miles.
Greg retires from the marathon,
with other runners taking his place to keep Eddie going,
but he's struggling to make up time.
So this it. Going over Tower Bridge. Running late.
We've just got to keep going.Are you going to make the five hours?
I don't know. We're on the edge.
I think we've got just under three to go and we've got half an hour.
I'm not thinking about anything. I'm just kicking it.
I'm just putting everything in it.
Whatever happens, I will finish this and I will try my damnedest
to finish this in under five hours and to get this to land perfectly.
This is the landing on the moon. This is D-Day. This is it.
Look at the clock! Got 12 minutes!
12 minutes.
What he wanted to do was demonstrate that
not only has he run around the UK, but actually
he has run around the UK at a pace that people will respect.
♪ You were never supposed to leave
♪ Now my head's splitting at the seams
♪ And I don't know if I can
♪ I've come home... ♪
CHEERING
I...
I feel exhausted.
Eddie Izzard. Actor, comedian, now running legend.
He has run 43 marathons, 1,166 miles
and inspired millions of people around the UK
to rise to the challenge for Sport Relief.
It was rough.
I didn't make it.
Didn't make five I think by about 30 seconds.
Last word is, we started on a day kind of a little less rainy than this
and we wanted to come back on a bright, sunlit day
with the sun in the sky and children shouting.
But I'm going to sleep now for a week.
MUSIC: Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
Morning.
We brought an ice-cream van.
The best Magnum I've ever had, how about that?
Strawberry Cornetto if you want one. Very sweet of you.
If you've been inspired by Eddie's extraordinary challenge,
you can make a donation to Sport Relief right now.
Just text Eddie to 70005 and Sport Relief will get £5
to help transform the lives of poor and vulnerable people
all over the UK and in the world's poorest countries.
Texts cost £5 plus your standard network message charge
and the whole £5 goes to Sport Relief.
You must be 16 or over and please ask the bill payer's permission.
For more information, go to bbc.co.uk/sportrelief
♪ Baby, we were born to run
♪ Baby, we were born to run. ♪
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd