9-Year-Old Oliver Smith Ran 380K for His Dad. He Never Ran a Marathon.

Oliver Smith, 9, finished a 380K (236 mile) fundraising challenge on The Mall on April 25, covering the closing 2.6K of the London Marathon course a day before his mother ran all 26.2 miles of it. He has raised more than £17,000 for the charity that supported his father through brain surgery, and he has never run a marathon.

That last detail has gone missing from most accounts of what he did. Oliver, from Wombwell near Barnsley, set out in January to run the equivalent of nine marathons, one for each year of his age, after his father was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He and his family have been consistent about that wording on his own fundraising page and in the charity’s account of the challenge. The coverage has been looser. The BBC, which surprised him this week with tickets to the London premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, described him as “completing nine marathons in four months.”

What he actually set himself was 380K across roughly four months, an average of 3.3K a day. He accumulated it in the pieces available to a nine-year-old: Saturday 5K parkruns, Sunday junior parkruns, sessions with Wakefield Junior Triathlon Club, and runs with anyone who asked to join him.

Why the Wording Matters

British athletics does not permit a nine-year-old to race a marathon, and it is not a close call. England Athletics’ youth endurance guidance sets maximum road racing distances by age, and the table’s lowest bracket begins at over 11, where the cap is 5,000m. The marathon does not become available until over 18. For under-11s, the guidance covering licensed road and multi-terrain events recommends distances between 1K and 3K.

Measured against that guidance, nothing Oliver ran exceeded what England Athletics recommends for his age. Most of the distance came from parkrun, which is a free timed event rather than a licensed race and which requires under-11s to stay within arm’s reach of an adult for the full 5K. Junior parkrun is 2K and open from age four. The Mini London Marathon leg was 2.6K.

The wording travels beyond this one family, which is why it is worth getting right. Parents work out how far children should run and whether to attempt a structured build-up partly from what they read about other people’s children. Some children do race a long way past their age group, including at half-marathon distance, and record the sort of times that get reported nationally. Oliver did something different, and the accurate version of it is the more useful one.

The Reason He Was Running

Tom Smith was 39 when the tumor was found in August 2025. It was picked up after the sight in his left eye failed. An MRI showed a meningioma 4cm across, encircling the optic nerve on that side.

Surgeons at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield took it out on Dec. 11 in a 12-hour operation, going in through the cheekbone, upper jaw and eye socket, an approach chosen to leave the structure of his skull intact. He needed 47 stitches. He has since gone back to his job as an assistant headteacher.

“I’ve been really shocked by the array of different brain tumours that exist, the different symptoms that people experience and how aggressive they can be,” Tom told The Brain Tumour Charity, the organization Oliver chose to raise money for. Hannah Smith, Oliver’s mother and a PE teacher, ran London for a different cause, Children with Cancer.

Along the way Oliver ran a Barnsley parkrun with the local MPs Stephanie Peacock and Dan Jarvis, was praised in Parliament, and picked up a Heart Yorkshire Heroes award. On Wednesday, BBC’s The One Show told him he was travelling to London to be interviewed about his fundraising. He was taken to a hotel where Tom Holland, Zendaya and Jacob Batalon were waiting for him. “I burst into tears because I was just so happy,” he told the BBC.

His fundraising page had a target of £2,000 when he started. It stood at £14,949.96 on Friday, with a further £2,785 in Gift Aid.

The challenge is also not over. Oliver has set himself a second 380K across the six-week summer holiday, this time split between running, swimming and cycling, with a target of £20,000. On his own page he lists the ambition behind all of it: to become an Olympic triathlete.