On the days when Leodhais Macpherson asked himself if he could take one more step on his marathon challenge, he thought of his brother. “Conor was always at the back of my mind even on the mornings when I asked myself: can I run another marathon today?”
He did—and ran 128 marathons in 128 days finishing on what would have been Conor’s 28th birthday. Macpherson took up the challenge last year when he was 24, seven years after his brother took his own life at sea. His 128 days covered 3,332 miles (5,362 kilometres), the equivalent of the distance between North Shields in the North of England and New York, where Conor wanted to live.
Finishing in June 2025, he raised £100,000 ($190,000) for two charities: the RNLI, U.K.’s Royal National Lifeboat Institution—who tirelessly tried to find Conor in the challenging waters off England’s rugged north-east coast—and the mental health charity, U Care Share Foundation.
“What also kept me going was the amount of donations every day—the odd 20 pounds here, 10 pounds there. That saw me through the tough times,” he recalls.
Running multiple marathons was a no-brainer for Macpherson. “I have been running my whole life—usually 50–60 miles a week.” Increasing to 100 miles+ was achievable. While juggling his job as an environmental scientist and part-time personal trainer, he would split some runs into two half marathons, one in the morning, then in the evening. But weekends he would complete the 26.2 miles in one session.
His route was usually the same, around his hometown Tynemouth in North Shields. But there was something special about the final day.
Macpherson proposed to his girlfriend, Jaimie Walker, at the finish line. They plan to get married in Spain in August 2027.
In the meantime, Macpherson has other projects in mind. Relocating to Port Coquitlam, B.C., where his fiancé works, he decided to become a full-time personal trainer and run coach and has embraced the west coast running culture, competing in many races.
He is also taking the Abbott World Marathon Majors challenge of running all nine majors consecutively. He ran the London Marathon in April and will follow up with Sydney in August and then Berlin, Chicago and New York in the fall.
He will complete the challenge next year with Boston, Tokyo, Cape Town and Shanghai.
But he has some unfinished business in the U.K. He has been working on a documentary about his 128 marathons challenge with the hope of having some private premieres near his hometown at the end of September. “We won’t be sharing publicly just yet as we work out the media strategies.”
As with this documentary and any future projects, his brother will always be in his mind. “I hope to continue to share my message of mental health and suicide prevention.”
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