In May 2024, Peter Debenham was set to run 10K for the Chartwell Cancer Trust, but as the day approached, the run got cancelled and was moved to September.
Not wanting to wait around, the freelance operations specialist decided to set himself a challenge to raise money for the charity.
The 27-year-old told the News Shopper: “I was a little bit frustrated about the cancellation but doing the run itself is more about doing the charitable work and supporting the community, and I didn’t want to wait for just a day to do it.
“So I set myself my own challenge, but I overestimated it.
“I thought I’d do 500km over three months for the charity.
“At the time, it felt like a good idea, but it was much more challenging than I had ever anticipated.”
Peter went on to run 23km from London Victoria to Bromley, and from that moment, he said “it became very apparent that this was going to be a bit of a challenge”.
Over the summer, Peter ran 10km every two days after working out how much he’d need to run to achieve 500km by the end of the summer.
Towards the end of July, Peter went on holiday to America and continued to aim for his goal by doing runs in San Francisco too.
But not long after Peter returned to the UK, he faced a devastating experience.
Peter said: “About a week after I got back to the UK, there was a fire in my block of flats.
“10 or 15 minutes after I woke up, somebody was screaming to me to leave the flat because there was a fire above me.
“I didn’t know who it was, but I started to see a lot of smoke coming into the corridor of my flat.
“In that situation, you chuck on any clothing that you’ve got, and you leave.”
Peter lives on the ninth floor of his flat, and, because the lifts were out of service, ran down the flights of stairs to get out of the building.
Peter recalled seeing people screaming and said there was a lot of “panic and commotion”.
He added: “When I got to the ground floor, the fire was blasting bits of glass and ash into the air and the middle of St Mark’s Square.
“And I realised very quickly that the fire was directly above my flat.”
The residents were directed to St Mark’s Church and local Bromley support workers turned up to make sure the startled residents were okay.
Twelve fire engines and 80 firefighters tackled the block of flats, and part of a flat on the 10th and 11th floors was damaged by the fire.
The fire was believed to be accidental, caused by an electrical event occurring in an extension lead that was being used on a balcony.
Peter stayed at his parents’ house while waiting for news of his own home.
But as the days went on, Peter remained committed to finishing the challenge he’d set.
He said: “I don’t know if this is me as a person, but I was worried about falling behind on the charity challenges I set myself.
“I don’t know if it was more of a distraction, but I wanted to continue doing it because it was very important to me.
“I only had a few weeks left of the summer, and, even though the fire was a tremendously stressful and damaging experience, I thought to myself that I couldn’t let it beat me.
“I decided to keep running and pushing myself until I caught back to where I needed to be.”
On August 30, Lewis only had 5km left and completed the challenge.
Despite the “emotional end” to the challenge, he was still able to complete it and raised £1,300 for the charity.
However, after the run, Peter received more bad news.
He explained: “As soon as I completed the challenge, I thought the universe would come back at me and say I’m going to get my flat back.
“But unfortunately, I visited my flat again and I found out that there’s severe damage to my flat because of the water dripping down from the flat above.”
Most of the damage to Peter’s flat was water damage rather than fire damage.
Peter was told he would be moved out of his flat and it would take up to six months to rebuild his entire flat from scratch.
Peter said: “The one thing that kept me in good spirits is the fact that despite all this, I still managed to do the challenge and donate to charity.
“My grandmother had cancer and passed away when I was young, and it’s an important charity as they do a lot of good work in my area.”
