Niall Hutchinson explains why he has set himself the challenge of running seven major marathons in nine months – and how it is going so far.
Please can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background in dentistry?
I’m Niall Hutchinson and I graduated from Queen’s University in Belfast in 1987, opened my first practice in 1991, and ran it until 2009.
I took over another practice, Cherrytree Dental Care in Oxfordshire, in 2015. I’m a general dental practitioner – not specialised, just your bog standard GDP!
You’ve set yourself the challenge to run all seven major world marathons within just nine months. How did you first get into running?
It’s funny because at school, I was the s*** one. Kids would say ‘oh do we have to have Niall on our team? I wasn’t too bad at rugby but anything else you would not have wanted me on your team.
But in 2012, I did my first parkrun (I’m now up to 250) and a half marathon, which was a big deal for me back then.
Then for three years, I didn’t do much and was honestly drinking too much. But I hit a turning point when a doctor told me my blood pressure was 170 over 90. I told the doctor I was thinking about running again and he told me not to overdo it otherwise I’d have a heart attack.
So I started small, attempting a 1.5 mile run around a golf course near where I live. I got about a quarter through it and wanted to throw up. But I was determined – the doctor offered me tablets and I turned them down and asked him to give me three months. So I went out every day until after two or three weeks, I was able to run the full 1.5 miles with no trouble.
When did you decide to tackle a marathon?
In 2018, I went on holiday to Ireland with my kids. We were in the west of Ireland and they were advertising the Dingle Marathon. I used to go there with my parents and they had recently died so it felt like the right race for me.
I was sitting at Gatwick Airport about six weeks later and saw that entry had opened – so I went for it. I raised money for Smile Train after lots of my patients mentioned sponsoring me. I raised about £1,000 in total. The charity then offered me a place at the London Marathon following a drop out so I thought, why not? It would be rude not to!
Since then, I’ve run the London Marathon another four times – including yesterday’s, with a new personal best of of four hours and 39 minutes – and Dingle again too. And this is what led me to the initial idea of six marathon majors in nine months at 60 years old. However, they announced this year that Sydney was going to be a major, so it had to be all seven!
From the stats, I believe I’ll be one of the first in the world to do this. In addition, fewer than 500 people have run the previous six Abbot World Marathon Majors consecutively.
This means I’ll be running Sydney, Berlin, Chicago, New York, Tokyo, Boston, London from 31 August 2025 to 26 April 2026.
I’m running it for Smile Train – the world’s largest cleft charity. I’m attempting to Instagram my journey – though at 60 that’s as just a big a challenge as the marathons! Please follow me though @dentistrunning.
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