The Challenge

It started in 2015 as a '15 in 15' challenge to run 15 marathons in a calendar year. 15 soon became 17 and by the year was over had become 18. The plan is to keep running, keep raising awareness of mental health issues and to do so in the blue of the Mind vest.

Since 2015 I have been regularly running marathons and ultramarathons for Mind, running over 80 marathons in the last 5 years. 

Then in 2017 a new challenge emerged, in May I started the 7 Marathons in 7 Days challenge as part of Mental Health Awareness Week.

In 2020 I am again attempting to run 7 marathons in 7 days between 18th - 24th May, completely self supported, setting off at 4am each morning to try and avoid as many people as possible in this troubled times.

Background

In 2014, after many years of suffering with the condition I was diagnosed with depression. My first bout of depression came as a teenager, I would constantly withdraw myself from social situations, sitting in a dark room by myself pretending to study, when I was just hiding from others. I even had a ‘secret bench’ in the town where I could sit for hours out of view from everyone. The second bout began in 2013 and combined with the Anxiety, Stress and Insomnia I was suffering at the time it began to take over my life. Last year was a horrific year for my partner and her health, as her partner and caregiver the pressure of having to keep Jenny fed, keep her sane, keep the house clean as well as working a full time job and spending any spare time I had running all over the county and raising money for charity became too much. Eventually something had to break, and unfortunately for me it was my mental health.

With everything that was going on at the time the stress at work became too much, I would have to force myself out of bed every morning, knowing I had to go in as one of us had to work. I could feel the tension headaches building, smell and taste the blood before the nosebleeds started. I’d lose the ability to concentrate and find myself staring at my computer screen for 15-20 minutes at a time unable to focus on any of the letters on the screen. Every night I would go home and lay wide awake until the early hours of the morning, getting 2, maybe 3 hours sleep before the cycle repeated. As I laid there, unable to sleep my mind couldn’t help itself but to run through the events of the previous day, events I would begin to get stressed about all over again and the headaches and nosebleeds would return. The memory loss was the biggest worry, I’ve always been a bit forgetful but this was happening everyday, I’d constantly be walking into rooms and forgetting why the minute I stepped through the door.

As time wore on the symptoms intensified and I would go from breaking down in tears a couple of times a weak, to every day until it reached a pointed where I was breaking down several times each day. I was hiding it all from those around me, my family had no clue what was going on, Jenny only knew snippets and the energy it took to appear ‘normal’ in front of everyone was only draining me //more.

Many illnesses and conditions are widely spoken about and displayed for all to see, but I feel that their is a taboo about openly discussing mental illness. I hope to help raise awareness of how many people suffer silently with their condition, to show that it can affect anyone and to raise money that can go towards helping those that need it most.

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