Why Fat Man 100?

I need to exercise. That’s probably the simplest place to start.

Years ago, I ran marathons. I even did an ultra. Those days are gone. I’m not running anymore, but I can still walk.

The other side of the equation is that I love food. And I mean love food.

I’ve had what people now call “food noise” for as long as I can remember. I comfort eat. I’m very good at putting on weight. I’ve even caught myself subconsciously planning my day, and sometimes the bloody route I’m driving, so I can pick up something nice to eat along the way, sad, I know, but that’s the addiction.

That’s where the Fat Man comes in.

Meet the Fat Man

I think a lot of this goes right back to childhood.

Fear of getting things wrong. Fear of disappointing people. Food became comfort and, somewhere along the line, comfort became a habit.

That habit probably protected me once. I don’t need it to protect me anymore. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have told the Fat Man.

He’s still in there. Always looking for a way out. Always whispering in my ear.

“Go on. Sure one won’t hurt.” He’s a bastard and he’s relentless.

He woos me daily with promises of crisps, chocolate, takeaways and all manner of lovely things that I absolutely do not need.

And, to be fair to him, he’s bloody persuasive.

I’ve fought him before

I’ve tried all sorts of things over the years, some of them worked, for a while.

But nothing really stuck. I’ve gone down to around 14 stone, back above 17 stone, down to 15 stone and back up again. Lose it. Gain it. Start again.

Over and over. It’s exhausting physically, but it’s even worse mentally, that’s really what Fat Man 100 is about.

I’m not looking for another diet, I’m looking for a fight.

Then a few things happened

Recently I watched James Lawrence, The Iron Cowboy, complete 100 full-distance triathlons in 100 consecutive days.

It was ridiculous. The pain he was able to endure and his ability to get up the following morning and do the whole bloody thing again fascinated me.

I’d watched his earlier 50-50-50 challenge a few years ago, and somehow Conquer 100 found its way back into my algorithm at exactly the right time.

Around the same time, I read David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me.

Goggins talks about his “40% Rule”, the idea that when your mind tells you that you’re finished, when you have hit the wall, when you think I just can’t do one more step, you’ve often got considerably more left in you. He says that you are only 40% into what your body is capable of doing.

The idea stuck with me.

Then I came across Rich Roll on the Mel Robbins podcast.

His story is different again. He had his own demons to deal with and didn’t really get into endurance sport until his forties. He’s now in his late fifties and still doing extraordinary things.

And I thought, Maybe I’m not finished either.

So what could I do?

James Lawrence’s 100-day challenge wouldn’t leave my head. Obviously I wasn’t going to do 100 Ironmans. I’d probably get through the swim on Day One and need to be collected.

But the number 100 kept nagging away at my poor addled little brain. What could I do for 100 days? Something genuinely difficult, physical, something that would help me mentally as well.

Something I’d have a reasonable chance of actually completing, that fitted into my real life.

That last bit matters.

My 22-year-old son, Theo, has Down syndrome. I’m his main carer because he’s become too strong for Michele, my wife, to manage on her own.

I love him to bits, but caring for him places very real restrictions on what I can do and when I can do it, I can’t disappear off to the Himalayas for three months or even 3 weeks.

I can’t spend six hours a day training. Whatever challenge I created had to fit around my life rather than require me to escape from it.

And eventually it became obvious.

The Fat Man 100

10 kilometres – Every day – For 100 days.

That’s 1,000 kilometres, no rest days, no waiting for nice weather, no “I’ll make it up tomorrow.” Just get up and do the 10K. Then get up the next morning and do it again.

I’m 55. I’m overweight. I’ve got high blood pressure and a dodgy heart valve, so I’m not trying to pretend I’m an endurance athlete. I’m not.

I’m a fat man going for a walk, he is inside me battling 24/7 to get out.

I’m just going to keep going for a walk every day for 100 days, the challenge started on 16th September 2026.

Day 100 is Christmas Eve. Which means that after walking 1,000 kilometres while fighting the Fat Man inside me, I’ll finish just in time to meet…

the most famous Fat Man of them all. Santa Claus.

But there is another reason

There’s a more serious reason I’m doing this. I want to find out what happens if, for 100 days, I stop negotiating with myself. If on those hard days I say I’m walking 10K and I walk 10K.

Rain. Wind. Bad mood. Busy day. Can’t be arsed. Whatever. I want to know what happens to me physically. But much more importantly, I want to know what happens to me mentally.

I want to prove to myself that at 55 I can still decide to do something difficult and finish it and I’d like my kids to see that too.

I don’t know exactly what the next 100 days are going to look like. There will undoubtedly be days when I question the entire stupid idea. There will probably be rain, a lot of rain, this is Ireland after all, land of the green.

There will definitely be swearing, I have a few in mind already…

And the Fat Man will be there every single day, whispering in my ear, because he’s a bollix.

That’s okay. He can come along.

But he’s FUCKING walking.