Ben Hurley
Go Faster Ben
Fundraising for Mental Health Foundation
Story
Incredibly you raised double the target for Mental Health Foundation and Aware, topping over £4000 with gift aid, and you spurred me on to get round 26.2 miles in 2:56.25, well under the 3hrs target i'd set
Since running knee-deep in the Kerry snow at Xmas i've covered over 500 miles to prepare for those few hours last Sunday. Skating over frozen London streets and clambering up mountain tracks in New Zealand, with one thing in mind, running the London Marathon in memory of my friend the wonderful Roberta Gray, who took her own life on New Year’s Day 2006 after a long struggle with depression
As I waited for the start I reminded myself why I was running, for Roberta, for her family, for everyone that supported the campaign and for all the people that sent me personal messages about how they or their friends or families have been affected by mental health problems. This got me through the dark patches and I can't explain how I felt when I saw Roberta's mum cheering me on with the Mental Health Foundation crew at 18 miles, but I sped up.
And as I sped up through each of the remaining miles I imagined Roberta willing me on (while calling me an eejit). I thought about how lucky I am to be free to feel such a simple and manageable physical pain as burning legs and lungs compared to the pain faced by so many people that I can only imagine as feeling like an unscaleable wall of mental suffering.
I can't thank you all enough for your support and I pass on the thanks of Bert's family (they'd love to see you at the Aware 10k in Dublin on 18 Dec- i'll be there). Special thanks to Pete and Charlie at Belgrave for their expert advice and to sports massager Laura V for salvaging my battered muscles.
Thanks a million.
Go Faster Ben
Pics of various stages of pain: http://www.marathonfoto.com/order_my_photos.cfm?RaceOID=19802010S1&LastName=Hurley&BibNumber=42514&Language=en&BFI=nux5ubpguc&Frames=true&Flash=true&FlashVersion=8&Height=768&Width=1024&Index2Home=true
Stats for the nerds (6.45 ml average)
5K 00:21:27
10K 00:42:57 (21.30)
15K 01:04:03 (21.06/42.36)
20K 01:25:03 (21/42.00)
HALF 01:29:33
25K 01:45:47 (20.44/41.44)
30K 02:06:55 (21.08/41.52)
35K 02:27:48 (20.53/41.59)
40K 02:47:57 (20.09/41.02)
42k 02:56.25 (8.28) (7k 28.37)
More about Roberta
I met Roberta in Chicago 13 years ago this summer. A smart, sharp, hilarious Trinity College girl, she travelled the world with her gorgeous smile and returned to Dublin to become a succesful newspaper journalist, columnist and commentator. Dublin’s answer to Carrie Bradshaw, Roberta wrote a dating column in The Sunday Tribune, ‘This Dating Life’. In one of her columns she wrote: "There's a comforting sense of communality when someone announces an international day of depression. There's nothing worse than feeling unaccountably miserable and all alone in it."
A number of national Irish newspapers covered Roberta’s funeral and carried obituaries. The DCU School of Communications established in her honour the Roberty Gray Features Award for young journalist and she is remembered constantly by her friends and family who every year Roberta's get together to raise money for the Irish depression charity at the Aware 10km run.
http://www.dcu.ie/news/2006/mar/s0306g.shtml
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/a-beautiful-and-talented-young-girl-lost-to-despair-125378.html http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=33068§ioncode=1 (scroll down via link for obituary)