In the world of ultrarunning, William Goodge is a square peg in a round hole.
As one can glean from the various memes about ultrarunners, they are not the most glamorous lot. Having to run extremely long distances under sometimes extreme conditions, one expects them to look perennially unkempt and weather-beaten. They are not the most fashion conscious too.
Then came William.
He defies the archetype of how ultrarunners should look and even behave.
Rich Roll referred to him as “a former model sporting a muscled physique uncommon among endurance athletes, Will much prefers Paris Fashion Week and high tea at Claridge’s to camping. He’s keen to share his skincare routine with you and isn’t afraid to rock a Prada man purse. He cuts a different pose and has positioned himself as a powerful example to others who live outside the ultra bubble as to what’s possible in terms of manifesting potential.”
Indeed, Goodge’s well curated Instagram feed shows him rocking his Italian suits just as well as he does his running gear.
From the time he forayed into running as a way to help him cope with his mother’s death from cancer, he has collected quite an impressive array of accomplishments.
He did 48 marathons in 30 days, circumnavigated Lake Cuomo, Italy, and ran from Land’s End in Cornwall, England to John O’Groats in Scotland (spanning a distance of 10,424 kilometers!) — all to raise funds for cancer research in honor of his mother.
In 2018, he ran across the United States from Los Angeles to New York — a brutal 3,064 mile distance — in a blistering 55 days, 23 hours, and 51 minutes, and still managed to look like he just walked a fashion runway when he finished.
But not everyone’s a fan.
William Cockerell, a London-based runner, sportswriter, and statistics geek, has been an avid critic of Goodge. Even before Goodge and his team embarked on his US transcontinental project, Cockerrell warned Goodge’s team they might be biting off more than they could chew, based on his assessment of Goodge’s modest showing in official races like the 2022 Marathon des Sables.
Cockerell closely monitored Goodge’s progress during the run and found his heart rate suspiciously low despite supposedly averaging 55 miles a day.
Cockerell started a LetsRun thread accusing Goodge of foul play and traveled to Oklahoma to catch up with him along the running route.
He accused Goodge’s team of “watch muling,” i.e. sharing a GPS device between runners, resulting to a roadside altercation which was also comically documented on YouTube.
In the end, Cockerell left after hounding Goodge for days, without ever witnessing another runner logging miles in Goodge’s stead but still maintains he is a cheat to this day.
Martin Fritz Huber, a sports and fitness journalist, had an interesting take on why one would obsess about Goodge’s accomplishments when he’s mostly not running in official races anyway:
One could be forgiven for asking why anyone would be so passionate about exposing potential fraud in an unofficial, out-of-competition effort that was never poised to threaten a meaningful record and which is collecting money for a worthy cause. Part of the answer is that in the world of endurance obsessives, almost every esoteric record will be meaningful to someone.
The English TransCon mark of 64 days that Goodge initially believed he was going after belonged to the late Bruce Tulloh, a British athletics legend who won gold in the 5,000-meters at the 1962 European Championships.
Cockerell, who knew Tulloh personally, seems to have been agitated that a swaggering TikTok adonis with a very modest running resume wasn’t treating Tulloh with proper reverence.
Basically, old-timers in endurance sports don’t like the way social media “influencers” are stealing the thunder from the “legit” athletes.
To his credit, Goodge has mostly ignored the skeptics and last year placed 11th at the 240-mile MOAB race in Utah.
Nowadays, he is busy preparing for his most ambitious project: To be the fastest man to run across Australia. The world of running will be hawkishly watching for sure.