The overnight ultramarathon

It’s 1:30am at an abandoned tank factory in north-west London, and 40 people are labouring away on treadmills to the sound of techno music. In teams of four, they’ve been running since 10am, and will be running until 10am tomorrow. Everyone is wearing black. They wouldn’t look out of place in a Berlin nightclub. 

AP4 is a “24-hour treadmill factory”, an unsanctioned ultramarathon staged by the Arc Project. When people apply to participate, an online form warns them: “AP4 will be hard, cold, dangerous, painful and stressful. We also don’t have permission for you to run it… why do you want in?” Conversely, the room is hot; the collective effort of hundreds of sweaty runners. 

They’re wearing sunglasses to shield against the lights that beam unrelentingly during the “brightness hour”, which is followed by the quiet hour, then the darkness hour, which they navigate with head torches. There’s a light artist and a DJ, who is there to recreate the “psychological journey of a psychedelic trip, without the illegal stimulus”.

Whoever isn’t running is attempting to sleep in their assigned 2x2m encampment, though most are resigned to the fact that they won’t be able to. There’s something dystopian about the scene – it feels like a really cool prison camp. The runners seem locked in, in every sense of the phrase. 

This isn’t the first stunt the Arc Project has put on. AP3 was a 600km relay across the entire London Underground network, which received a lot of interest online. The venture was conceived of by three friends, Sonni Dyson, 24, James Taker, 25, and Hamish Myers, 26. When Sonni and Hamish clock off from their day job in dental technology, they clock into the Arc Project. The production is impressively DIY: Sonni designed a contraption that keeps track of how far each team runs – treadmills aren’t really designed for such long stints – and Hamish has taught himself sound engineering. 

The Arc Project has a manifesto: “The shallowness and distraction of the modern world has made our society sick,” it suggests, dominated by “shallow interactions and cheap dopamine”. They want to manufacture a “rebellion”, to “gift people back days of their life”. Myers tells me they take part in ultramarathons to “forcibly interrupt the everyday”. He claims not to have slept in a while. 

For Megan Hamill, 26, running has been her riposte to ill fortune. After her father became wheelchair-bound following a work accident, and her mother and sister were diagnosed with cancer, she would keep asking herself why things happened as they do. “Endurance events are where my brain stops asking the questions and finds peace and acceptance in the rhythm,” she says.

The fastest team at AP4 ends up clocking a preternatural 285.73km, which is like running from Glasgow to Liverpool. Each pair alternated, sprinting for three minutes, for seven rounds at a time, before the other duo relieved them from their stations. The secret to surviving these feats, I’m told, is a sustained intake of carbs and calories – brioche buns, sugar packets. Arc suggests that the treadmill marathon “immortalises a day that would otherwise die”. The runners barely look tired.

Illustration Oscar Ingham