A Toronto man is waiting to find out if he has broken the world record for most marathons run in one year.

At the beginning of last year, Ben Pobjoy dedicated all of 2023 to running as many marathons as possible all across the globe.

By the end of December, he completed 242 marathons, or stretches of 43 kilometres at varying speeds, in nearly 70 countries or jurisdictions. Pobjoy even quit his job and sold his personal possessions to fund the journey he describes as the adventure of a lifetime.

“I actually don’t consider myself an athlete at all. I’m just someone who likes to wonder through the world holding pens and cameras, kind of documenting planet earth and the human condition,” said Pobjoy. “So, for me, it is a creative project that had a big physical expression.”

Pobjoy put together a map that documented the 75 different flights and 140,000 kilometres he flew during this feat.

“It was pretty complex … I’m also married so I had to come home and see my wife. So kind of was flying, zigzagging all over the place. And originally I was doing it on paper but it got so confusing that I had to draw it out.”

And he could only travel with one backpack filled with his things.

“You can see how [the] shoes … went super bald … a headlamp ’cause there’s not street lights. I wore a GPS unit that relayed my whereabouts to my family in real time. And then along the way people gave me kind of little ambulance for protection.”

He learned quite quickly that mind over matter was the most important thing to keeping up with his journey.

“I think the most difficult thing is like you learn very quickly that your body can give up on you and so you have to go into your mind … for m, it really was just a lesson on perseverance.”

When asked what he learned along the way, Pobjoy said, “One thing I really wanna stress that I learned about the world is we’re way more alike than we are dissimilar. I’ve always loved the world. It’s my muse and I feel like I fell in love with it that much more.”

Pobjoy said he would do it all again, but in the meantime, has submitted paperwork to Guinness World Records to find out if this trek was indeed record-setting.

He hopes to hear back within about 12 weeks.

“My hope is that I end up getting the piece of paper to go on the fridge. But I think with all of these projects, uh, as cliché as it sounds like the journey is the destination.”