Paul sits down with Mark, introduced through fellow guest Rebecca after a 25-year friendship forged in their first graduate jobs. Mark's running story starts like so many others on this podcast — nearly 30, a neighbour training after childbirth, and a Sunday-night routine that began with not being able to run to the end of the road without stopping. What follows is a conversation about weight, discipline, and the slow work of learning that fitness isn't just about miles logged but what you actually put into your body — portion control, tracking, and finally understanding his own relationship with food after decades of "treadmill specials" and Christmas-to-Lent cycles.

The heart of the episode is Mark's 2019 challenge: 15 marathons in 15 months, run while working for Sands, a charity supporting families after stillbirth and neonatal death, raising money and awareness one marathon at a time. Inspired by local hero Francis Benali, Mark ran through COVID lockdowns, homemade courses, and socially distanced club laps, eventually smashing his sub-four-hour goal at marathon 13 with a 3:52. Then came marathon 14 — run the week before Christmas, six days after his PB, tracing his own life story from the hospital where he was born to the streets of his childhood. He finished feeling wrong. By that night, his wife and friends were insisting something wasn't right.

What followed was a trip to A&E against COVID-era advice not to go, a blood test showing a troponin level thousands of times above normal, and the discovery that Mark had run his 13th and 14th marathons — including a PB — while having a heart attack. His cardiologist's verdict reframed the entire story: rather than reckless, Mark's fitness had likely kept him alive long enough to get help. The conversation doesn't stop at the medical drama, though — it goes deep into what came after: the identity crisis of no longer being "marathon man," survivor's guilt, counselling, and the slow rebuild of trust in his own body.

Six years on, Mark is back running 10Ks and half marathons, has never ruled out a 15th marathon, and carries with him a line spotted on a stranger's race shirt at a parkrun: the comeback is greater than the setback.

Honest, moving, and full of hard-won perspective — this episode is about fitness, faith, identity, and what it really means to be lucky to be alive.

The PKS Running Club Podcast is a running motivation podcast for everyday runners — real personal stories, honest conversations about health and fitness, and a growing community built around showing up, not chasing elite times. Hosted by Paul, it's a health & fitness podcast and community sports podcast for anyone running at their own pace, from first 5Ks to ultramarathons.

New episodes every Wednesday. Follow @thepksrunningclub on Instagram, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it.

Paul welcomes the show's first international guest: Yobster, a Nigerian-born runner now based in Toronto, Ontario, whose running journey started in October 2024 in the middle of a career leap and a genuine mental breakdown. Four months later, with no training plan, no long runs, and a race-day fuel strategy of dates and electrolytes, he lined up for the Lagos City Marathon — went out too fast, hit the wall at halfway, and finished in 4:52 before his immune system gave out entirely for weeks afterward.

What follows is one of the most rapid and well-documented progressions the podcast has covered. Eight weeks of his first proper structured training block brought Milton Keynes down to 3:52, with his wife watching him race for the first time. A full cycle later, Toronto Waterfront dropped him to 3:35, his kids cheering from the course as he stopped at the 40K mark just to hug them. From there, a charity place at the London Marathon — run in memory of friends lost to pancreatic cancer — meant training through a brutal Toronto winter split between treadmill sessions and outdoor long runs, chasing a goal he almost didn't say out loud.

He crossed the London finish line in 3:19:56, four seconds inside his target, despite a tendinitis scare in the taper. But the heart of this conversation isn't the splits — it's what Yobster calls "the journey": a running philosophy built on Galatians 6:9 ("let us not grow weary in doing good"), why he cries at every single race, and how learning to be vulnerable — including a phone call with his young son praying for him mid-marathon — has reshaped his marriage and how his family sees him.

The conversation also gets into the mechanics: training by feel and heart rate rather than fixed paces, letting fitness "come to him" instead of chasing a number, the cost of going out too hard in that first Lagos marathon, and what's next — the Berlin Marathon in two weeks, chasing 3:10, with sub-3 waiting patiently for whenever the journey gets him there.

Emotional, faith-filled, and full of hard-won wisdom — this episode is about patience, purpose, and what running reveals about who you really are.

The PKS Running Club Podcast is a running motivation podcast for everyday runners — real personal stories, honest conversations about health and fitness, and a growing community built around showing up, not chasing elite times. Hosted by Paul, it's a health & fitness podcast and community sports podcast for anyone running at their own pace, from first 5Ks to ultramarathons.

New episodes every Wednesday. Follow @thepksrunningclub on Instagram, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it.

Paul's second conversation with JP King, an ex-army pilot turned serial entrepreneur, is every bit as wide-ranging as the first. JP's running story starts on a school cross-country course in the 1970s and runs straight through the British Army, where his first-ever marathon was run on tour in Bosnia — personal protection weapon stuffed down his trousers, no wicking fabric in sight, and a blister to prove it. He followed it up with London in 2002, and twenty-five years later he's got a place for London 2027, this time chasing sub-four rather than the 3:20 he ran in his prime.

The conversation moves through JP's life as an entrepreneur who's built companies worth millions and watched others collapse, and how that same appetite for risk shows up in his running. He talks candidly about depression, why he calls running the thing that "clears his mind" when nothing else can, and the real reason he wears a running vest on every run — not for gels or a GoPro, but to carry the memory of army friends who died young and can't run anymore. There's a properly moving thread here about mental health, consistency, and why missing a week (or a year) of running is never a reason to quit for good.

And then there's the rest of it: nostalgia for pump-up trainers and leather spikes with six-inch nails, a shared loathing of the London Marathon's new two-day split ("a cash grab," they agree), a rant against sports-nutrition marketing aimed at people running a casual 5K, and the return of PKS Runs' most infamous unit of measurement — miles per shit — which JP confirms has genuinely changed how he calculates a long run. It ends with JP marshaling the Frome Running Festival for the first time and Paul threatening to turn up in a vest with a fake gun for their next event together.

Funny, unfiltered, and unexpectedly tender in places — this episode is about fear, failure, army boots, and why the community around running matters more than the numbers on the watch.

The PKS Running Club Podcast is a running motivation podcast for everyday runners — real personal stories, honest conversations about health and fitness, and a growing community built around showing up, not chasing elite times. Hosted by Paul, it's a health & fitness podcast and community sports podcast for anyone running at their own pace, from first 5Ks to ultramarathons.

New episodes every Wednesday. Follow @thepksrunningclub on Instagram, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it.