Story
On 26th April 2026, John will be running for Team SUDC UK in the TCS London Marathon in memory of his son, Benjamin.
John's aim is to match or better his Dad's PB of 3:24:43 which he set in 1989!
On the 22nd May 2022, Benjamin died very suddenly and unexpectedly. Benjamin was a beautiful, healthy, lively, robust little boy who had spent a fun-filled morning running around with his cousins and brother. He went down for his usual afternoon nap happy and singing to himself. When we later came to check on him he was non-responsive and couldn’t be brought back. He was just 2 years and 3 weeks old.
We have no answers for why Benjamin died. No explanations have been found, and they probably never will be. This type of death in children between the ages of 1 and 18 years is categorised as SUDC: Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood. It is something very few people have heard about, including us until we lost our incredible little boy. There is very little research into SUDC and it receives no public funding - all research is funded by fundraising and donations.
Since Benjamin’s death we have connected with SUDC UK, a charity who are working hard to raise awareness and help make SUDC predictable and preventable along with supporting families like ours who are experiencing their worst nightmare. There are no words to describe the loss of such an amazing little human.
We would like to raise as much money as possible towards such an underfunded, under-researched area of child death because no healthy child should go to sleep and not wake up.