Meet the Yorkshire man who ran 75 marathons in 75 days at the age of 75

That attitude is precisely the reason why the 82-year-old has to his name an impressive record of accomplishments.

Top of the list has surely got to be running seventy-five marathons in seventy-five days – a challenge which started two days after his seventy-fifth birthday – to raise money for his local special educational needs school in Rotherham.

“Most people said that is not possible. Nobody can do that, not at 75. For me, in later life, I’ve been trying to find something that literally flattens me," he says. “Honestly, it was easy. I don’t mean that to sound facetious. I seem to have an incredible ability of recovering like lightning after a marathon.”

There isn’t a note of bragging in his voice. Far from it. Listening to him is both empowering and inspiring. And that’s exactly what the former boxer and fitness fan hopes people will get from his new memoir, published this weekend.

Path to Success champions a mantra that former boxer Ray has followed throughout his life – that you need to be willing to stand on the start line, mentally and physically – and that vision without action is nothing more than a dream. "The idea always is to try to inspire people,” he says.

Writing the book has been both challenging and mentally draining for a man quite reluctant to sit still. He found himself doing so for hours at a time but if he can motivate others, the rewards, says Ray, are comparable to the buzz from crossing a finish line.

His 75 challenge is among the most memorable but the man who launched the Rotherham 10km has also taken on a gruelling race across the Sahara Desert, completed city marathons around the world and run 150-miles in one stretch. Not bad for someone who only took up running seriously after watching the London Marathon in his 50s.

It was a development in childhood though, which first put him on the road of challenging himself to achieve, setting the standards for the rest of his life.

“We like everybody else had got nothing,” Ray reflects of his childhood, raised in a Catholic, working-class family in Rotherham.

“I was bullied in school. I had bright ginger hair and I hated it. If somebody called me ginger, it was fists up and then I’d cop it when I got home because I’d usually end up with blood all over the only shirt I’d got.”

At the age of ten, Ray joined Rotherham’s Red Lion boxing club. There he took his first steps in learning how to box, but more than that, participating in the sport also forged within him values that would go on to shape his life.

"I also learnt never to take the skills you’re being taught out into the street to use against other people,” Ray says. “The idea in my head was I was going to learn how to fight and go back to school to knock seven bells out of the bullies, but of course, that’s not how it works.”

His early physical training also set the foundation for the endurance events Ray has gone on to complete and it helped him to develop the mental strength that he has needed to push through such feats. It is why, in the book, he intertwines the two.

“I’ve done challenges most people said were not possible,” Ray reflects. “There were many doubters. I thought I need to document this, to explain to people how it is possible and how you can get on and do stuff, even at 70 and 75. I am a believer that I can do anything I set my mind to.”

His challenges have not just been personal though. Ray has supported a number of charities and good causes through the events, most notably fundraising for Newman School, which caters for young people with SEND from ages two to 19.

Ray, who formerly ran a structural engineering firm, has been helping the school for more than a decade, first fundraising to pay for a specialist trike to support a number of children with disabilities.

“I managed to get them that and I’ll never forget the joy on the faces of the kids when they came riding down with me following them into a room filled with press. I vowed there and then that whatever these kids needed, I would do my best to try and get it for them.”

Part of the money from his 75 challenge was used for the development of a woodland pathway so children at the school could have greater access to nature. The pathway inspired the title of his book.

“That path has got more going for it than I ever dreamt of. What I’m told now is that the teachers and children use the path for enjoyment but also for counselling, talking about sensitive matters in solitude. Children like to go in to have some of their own space. They take a therapy dog for a walk there, they use it for exercising. It’s not just a path, it’s much more than that.”

“I’m so lucky that I’ve got a body, even at my age, that allows me to do these things and to make a difference to people,” he adds. “If I can do that, I can’t want no more.”

Ray is passionate about children’s health fitness and works with local schools to challenge young people to run one mile a day, to increase fitness levels and boost mental wellbeing.

More generally, “my aim is to motivate, and inspire as many people as I possibly can to take up a challenge,” he writes, “however large or small and bring about that good feeling. Just do it.”

Path to Success, by Ray Matthews, is out May 28, published by The Book Guild.