Garside began his record-setting run following two aborted attempts from Cape Town, South Africa and London, England.

In assessing his feat, Trailrunner senior editor Monique Cole stated he had clearly run more of the world than anyone else,[1] while former media critic Dan Koeppel, who became one of the few journalists outside Guinness to discuss and examine his full records at length, became convinced by 2005[2] that Garside had indeed run around the world and expressed great remorse and "haunting" guilt at his past part in fuelling a media frenzy that, as he felt, "screwed one of the greatest runners ever" and "erased... one of the most incredible things a runner had ever done".

He credited as part of his motive, his mother's happiness at leaving his father to return to her native country, Slovakia, following their divorce, when he was a teenager, and also finding that the state of mind he reached when running as an adult brought back some of his "best times" from childhood, where he ran and played in the "huge forests" near his house.

This is the world... Garside's first effort from Cape Town, South Africa, in early 1996 was abandoned in Namibia,[5] and his second attempt, begun on 7 December 1996, started from London's Piccadilly Circus[5][8] but was abandoned at the Russia-Kazakhstan border around June 1997; Garside initially covered up the break in running with fabricated diary entries (see below), for which he later apologised saying that he had not wanted potential competitors to know of the lapsed progress.

[11] During his run, Garside updated his website with a portable computer,[8] describing an arduous journey complicated by human and natural hurdles that included physical attacks and imprisonment as well as grueling climate extremes.

[5][12][13] He met with considerable assistance, as he was offered lodgings around the globe in such diverse settings as five-star hotels and private homes to prison cells and police stations.

[14] Garside completed his world-traversing journey on 13 June 2003 at the monument of India Gate, at which time The Independent reported the total miles run over five and a half years at 35,000 (approximately 56,000 kilometers), covering territory in 30 countries.

In 2001 faced with questions about his records, he admitted that some diary entries from around June 1997, prior to his restart in New Delhi, describing colorful adventures in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan had been fabricated to hide his diversion home from competitors.

[2] One such incident was his meeting with Ronnie Biggs, a famous British criminal, on the coast of Rio de Janeiro, when according to his diary he was supposed to be in the Amazon rainforest.

[2] and that his 3-month visa had expired by Manaus, requiring back-and-forth flights to several cities to rectify the problem before resuming, which had not been documented online.

Garside – often running thousands of miles away or in isolated places, poorly disposed towards much of the broader running community, solitary, secretive about adverse events affecting his progress, and at times abrasive in his responses[1][2] – was often poorly placed to handle these appropriately,[2] and at times responded with invective or numerous phone calls instead.

[1] Even before Garside completed his third run, some ultra distance runners and press media had questioned his achievement, in particular because he seemed to be an individual without recognized prior ultrarunning experience and who had lacked the usual help, and some of his claims seemed too remarkable to be plausible.

A 2002 article in Sports Illustrated described media and the running community's concerns in depth, saying that "[His] 'little white lies' have led to bigger and grayer ones (he has been forced to retract [other claims]), so that now nobody knows what, if anything, he says is true", and characterised him as a "self-mythologizer";[29] a former ally was quoted in the same article as opining that Garside was being "destroyed" before he had finished the run, by his "readiness to deceive".

"[30] A demonstration for Richard and Judy on Channel 4 in the UK, for which Garside agreed to rerun the 130 miles he stated he had run in 24 hours (a routine distance for an ultrarunner), observed by witnesses including Ian Champion of the London to Brighton Run and UK Road Runners Club, resulted in Garside pulling out after 72 miles.

Where Blaikie, Riley and other ultrarunners saw the Nullarbor as unrunnable without support, Garside explained to Koeppel that the Nullarbor was "no tougher than anywhere else", because he obtained support from "passing traffic" who would leave water cached ahead for him at agreed drop-offs, or give him transport to sleep elsewhere after a day's running and take him back to resume running the next day from the same place he had stopped.

[1] They stated that Guinness did not require running where roads did not exist, or unreasonable feats, but noted that his undisclosed use of air flight at times – notably in parts of Central and South America – led to "the British press... ripping into him".

[2] Finding that Guinness, having accepted the record as genuine in 2007, had "rested" it (removed it from their public records), Koeppel began attempting to reverse the decision, and, when Garside became uncontactable in 2010, he decided to go further and challenge Blaikie's premise that the Nullarbor was unrunnable, by successfully running 200 miles across the heart of the Nullarbor – its "loneliest, driest, emptiest" zone – himself using Garside's strategy, and relying on support from passing drivers rather than a formal crew.

[23] Guinness World Records began considering evidence of Garside's record, evaluating the journey that began in New Delhi on 20 October 1997, after his detour to spend time in the UK with his girlfriend, including China, Japan, Australia, South America, North America, Africa, southern Europe, and the Middle East.