00:00Hi everyone, my name is Matthew Atpan, I'm 37 and I'm born and bred from Leeds.
00:05I generally speak myself as being black British but also being on the autism spectrum and I'm hoping to be a celebrity ambassador for the National Autistic Society as I run the London Marathon to break what would be my seventh Guinness World Record attempt for disability as well coming up in April.
00:22It was in 2002 that I started running, that was at Leeds City Athletics Club and I ran with them for two years but then I actually gave it up.
00:29It was around December 2007 actually watching an episode of EastEnders that I decided I want to pick this up.
00:35So I ran for about 9 to 10 months without any competitions and then my first running event was the Barnsley 10k and I ran 39 minutes for that so I knew I was on a good page to run that.
00:46And eventually I came across Woodhouse Moorpark which is where we are today now.
00:51That was in December 2008 and at that point I think there was only about 10, no more than 10 parkruns in the country.
00:58So 400 parkruns later, New Year's Day 2026, I've done my 400 parkruns.
01:03Since my dad died in 2021, I started doing a lot of volunteering especially at Woodhouse Moorpark.
01:09And after that I think I've done the Commonwealth Games where I was a medal bearer and then that's all led on to sort of like me potentially trying to get into the journalism and like being involved somehow in journalism and giving back to the community.
01:21Where as I've done my first Guinness World Record which was for my dad, I raised money for victim support charity and I ran as John Cena if people are familiar with him, the actor and wrestler to salute him who's just retired now.
01:32Every year since 2021 I've done a Guinness World Record and now I've done, I've got five in total and I'm hoping for my sixth and seventh at the London Marathon coming.
01:40And thankfully there's another person going from Hyde Park Harriers, which is my running club as well, people with autism, we can do anything and that's why it's just about proving that, you know, I've got the platform now.
01:50Hopefully people can see that and hear that and reach out to me and if there's any support needed, I can help because I'm also going to be doing a bit of leads autism awareness as well leads autism aim and working one on one with somebody to try and push them forward in their own journeys.
02:03Because I started like just by running a time that I wanted to and trying to see how how good I was.
02:08But now like I can see that people are inspired by me and I think that's what it is because when I was a shout out to Leeds Beckett University.
02:15When I was doing my degree there, I did my dissertation on why people over the age of 40 start running.
02:21And I didn't know when I got to 40 because obviously the body is going to go down, especially over the 5k distance, am I going to still have the motivation?
02:28And now it's because other people are relying on me, whether it be the parkrunners or the people at the National Autistic Society, Leeds Autism Aim, Child Friendly Leeds, other people and even my mum there, you know, to extend in terms of like, you know, what she might expect out of me really.
02:43And that's like the, that's like the sort of goal, just through sport in general, you can meet so many different people and they can give you so many ideas, whether it be for a career, whether it be through leisure.
02:52And that's the key to life really using exercise and sport, not just for the physical benefits, but also for the mental health side and friendliness as well.
02:59You can see this as well.
03:00You can see this as well!
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