A man, who was once number one in the world on a popular video game, lost four stone in eight months and now runs ultramarathons.
Sam King, who lives in East Dulwich, started the year on a high by running back-to-back marathons on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. But he said he wasn’t always like this.
The 29-year-old management consultant grew up in Frinton-on-Sea in Essex, and at age fifteen, he became addicted to playing video games.
“I loved where I grew up and the summers were great – but there wasn’t much to do the rest of the time,” he said.
“That’s when I started playing a lot of video games. At one point, I was number one in the world on the leaderboard for Call of Duty.”
In addition to quite literally being at the top of his game, he said he was severely overweight.
“At my biggest, I was nearly seventeen stone,” he said.
It was upon his move to London was when he realised he had to lose weight and get healthy: “When I was about nineteen, I moved to London and it opened up a whole new world. I was off the video games, got a gym membership and started going five times a week.”
He said this, as well as a change in diet, led to him losing four stone in eight months. But he wasn’t quite done there.
“I never do things by halves. So when my brother asked me to do the London Marathon, even though I’d never been a runner and only had two months to train, I agreed.”
He smashed his goal and ran it in just under 3.5 hours, and he said he’d “got the bug.” In the last twelve months alone, he has completed twelve marathons and eight ‘ultramarathons.’
“Ultramarathons are typically anything over 50k and tend to be more extreme than running flat. They’re also very picturesque.”
He recently found himself in the Wadi Desert in Jordan, where he ran 250k and finished fourth out of 140 people – nearly half of whom didn’t finish the race because of the heat.
“I’ve been lucky enough to travel to some amazing places with ultrarunning, and have plenty more planned, including the Arctic circle, the Amazon rainforest and the Sahara Desert. My aim is to run fifty marathons before I turn 30 – I have twenty-four to go.”
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He is a member of the Dulwich running club and said he regularly trains all over Southwark.
“My best advice is to discipline yourself if you want to achieve anything.”
“I used to be lazy, and I knew it, and there were many days when I first started running when I couldn’t think of anything worse to do. But discipline is important. No matter how you feel, get up and do what you’re supposed to do.”
Sam has raised thousands for charity through his running, including for Ambassadors in Football – a charity that helps children from troubled backgrounds get into football.