Simon Pilkington, iGaming CEO of strategic business consultancy SMPL Consulting, will be joined by Rob Dowling when they seek to accomplish the incredible feat of running six ultra marathons in six days for the Oliver’s Wish Foundation.
The duo will kick off by running the London Marathon on 27 April 2025 and then, directly after, will run home from London to Bristol over a total of six days, largely following the canal path system linking Paddington to Bristol, finishing at the ‘Dirty Duck’ (Black Swan) in Westbury-on-Trym.
Pilkington took a break from putting in miles on the road to talk to us and discuss his preparations and motivations for the event.
iGaming Expert: What prompted you to take on this charitable journey?
Simon Pilkington: It was a bit of a combination of things, between the desire to do something and a little bit of blind luck.
Since being part of the SBC Charity Boxing Event in 2023, I’d been thinking about what else I can do and every year since I ran the London Marathon in 2012, I’ve entered the ballot – mostly to believe I’m a good person by donating the charitable entry fee and knowing very well that I wasn’t going to get into it.
This year, I’d been to the Foo Fighters concert in Cardiff, I was quite drunk and very hungover the next day, when an email came in from the London Marathon, which spat confetti at me and told me I’m in.
At the same time, I’d been reading Ross Edgley’s book and one of Sean Conway’s books, two major endurance athletes, so I was very inspired to do something bigger and longer, rather than shorter and faster, if marathons can be classed as that.
Then I realised that with no boxing happening in the last 18 months, and I hadn’t seen anyone doing anything for Oliver’s Wish, I figured they would be grateful for someone doing a challenge and raising as much money as possible. So that’s what got us there to begin with.
iGX: Why is the Oliver’s Wish cause so special for you?
SP: As you’ll know from doing the boxing in 2023, that started as very much about me wanting to push myself out of my comfort zone. But through the event and all the promotion around it, I got to know the charity very well.
It was the charity we were all fighting for, and I’m still super proud that we managed to raise between £150,000 to £200,000 for that cause.
There’s something about the whole foundation and the charities that are in it that sings out on me. Rob set up the charity off the back of losing Oliver Dowling when he was two years old to a sudden, unexplained death, for me, at the same time my son was four years old, and it really resonated deeply with me.
Knowing that lots of the money went to SUDC (Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood) in the UK, and also a hospice called Chestnut House, which is massively underfunded and also the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, where my wife works at the The Bristol Royal Infirmary. So I have a lot of connections in many different ways. The boxing solidified this, and this is a cause that I care deeply about, and I want to go on and help so much.
iGX: How has the training been going so far?
SP: Ugh, it has been going, is the best way to describe it. The beginning stuff was already good. I had kept up my boxing training a bit, so I was in high aerobic fitness, but I had only sort of run once a week anywhere between 5K and 10K to keep the base fitness up.
So I upped the levels to 15K, then 15 to 20 – just to see if the legs could hold it a bit and once I released they could I spoke to Rob (Dowling) at G2E in Vegas and as soon as they told me they were keen for me to do it for them, that’s when I really ramped up the training. It has been going pretty well, the winter has been brutal as I tend to get my runs done at around 5am before the school run, so I can still be around with the family.
These mornings during November, December and January this year have been like -4 degrees. I’m in a good place, where I have put a lot of miles in, but eight weeks out from the boxing, I felt a bit flat, where I thought I was rubbish, but then I peaked towards the event. I feel like I have been through that flat patch and am trying to find the balance between doing the miles and feeling the pain, without destroying my body to where I won’t actually be able to do it.
iGX: What type of training is it you’re doing exactly?
SP: I have kept the boxing up actually, I have still been doing Muay Thai too. I have kept that up at sort of once a week. Because all my running is really, slow, almost as slow as I can possibly run, which is quite funny when you have a lot of random people overtaking you and thinking you’re the slowest person in the world. But it’s not about running fast and burning energy, but it’s about getting back from the London Marathon to Bristol – 30 miles a day for six days – it’s a lot of mileage and I just need to go slow, so tons of slow running.
I’m also doing running-specific weights, which started with core strength with deadlifts, and now it’s moving into a lot of single-leg stuff and squatting, Nordic hamstring curls, really horrible stuff, but it will enable me to keep on running.
iGX: What is the biggest challenge in all of this?
SP: I believe it will be the mental side of things. I think even the most decorated marathon runners feel mental anguish and pain. There will also be many miles where we don’t see anything at all and have no opportunity to get anything to replenish, so nutrition will be a challenge.
iGX: Do you think it will be hard to keep the adrenaline up after the buzz of the London Marathon?
SP: That is a really interesting point and one no one else has raised actually. I have done London before and have done it as fast as I can. I enjoyed that day, but I didn’t enjoy it totally because I was trying to smash myself into getting a PB. This time, if I run it in less than five hours, I have gone too fast, which gives me the opportunity to use the crowd and really enjoy it and soak in the atmosphere and help other people get over the line.
I don’t think the motivation after that will be a challenge, but I know how my body is going to be feeling the next day, and that is going to be incredibly rough. Thankfully, I have some great people from the iGaming industry to join me along the way.
iGX: What plays in the headphones whilst you’re running?
SP: I’m a lunatic actually, and I don’t have any music on whilst I run. I think that stems from running in London, where the streets are so busy. I actually just talk to myself in my head whilst I run, I work out problems in my head and think of solutions in my head.
iGX: Any advice to people who are looking to start running?
SP: I have told this story far too many times now, but there was a point when I went to Malta to become CEO of KafeRocks and I let everything get on top of me, I let my health go and my weight piled up – I gained 25KG, I got completely out of shape and wasn’t doing any exercise. I snapped out of that and decided I had to do some exercise. It is hard at the beginning because everything hurts, but you start with 10K, and then it’s about consistency and continuing to build and improve intensity.
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To donate to Oliver’s Wish and support Simon and Rob in the incredible journey, click on the link below: https://www.justgiving.com/page/olivers-army-6-ultras
