Please Help Me Make a Difference! I’m Running the Milton Keynes Marathon to Support People in Pain. My name is Kieran Hinsley, I’m 28, from Sheffield, and I’ve spent the last four years living in constant pain. Not the kind of pain that comes and goes, the kind that changes who you are, how you move, how you think, and how you see yourself.

On 4th May 2026, I’ll be running the Milton Keynes Marathon to raise money for Pain Concern, whose mission is to support and inform people with pain and those who care for them, through information, education, campaigning, and research, so they can live full and valued lives despite pain. But more than that, I’m running to raise awareness, to show that long-term pain can happen to anyone, at any age, and that the silence around it needs to end. I never imagined my mid-20s would look like this. They’re supposed to be full of adventure, energy, and freedom… not fear, swelling joints, and days spent trying to convince doctors that something is wrong with you.

Me and My Pain

My pain began when I was 24, my fingertips and a couple of knuckles would swell and ache. I thought it was dermatitis. Maybe an allergic reaction. Something simple. Something fixable. But it kept returning. Worse each time. More joints. More swelling. More days where my fingers wouldn’t bend or straighten at all.

Then came the spreading.

My wrists. My elbows. The centre of my hands. Everyday tasks became battles so I went to my GP again and again, searching for answers, but left with nothing. No diagnosis. No plan. No understanding.

Eventually, I was referred to rheumatology. I felt hopeful. Finally, someone might see what I was going through. But after blood tests, X-rays, ultrasounds, the consultant told me everything looked fine.

“Come back when it gets worse,” they said.
Things were already unbearable, and yet apparently, it wasn’t “bad enough.”

And all of this was happening just as I became a father for the first time. I should have been enjoying every second. Instead, I struggled to fasten tiny buttons on baby clothes. Some days, I couldn’t even lift my daughter without pain shooting through my body. The guilt was unbearable. I felt like I was failing as a dad, failing as a husband… and failing myself.

Then it spread again.

My fingers, wrists, elbows, back, ankles, feet, toes, every part of me seemed to take turns swelling until I could barely move. Flares would last ten days at a time, and just as one was going down, another would begin. When I went back to rheumatology, they thought my epilepsy medication could be the cause. Changing it turned out to be one of the worst decisions I’ve made because soon I wasn’t just swollen and in agony, I was having seizures again too.

By 27, I was at rock bottom. Physically, mentally, emotionally. I couldn’t dress myself and some days I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t trust my own body. I felt like life was slipping through my fingers, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. And still, I was told to “come back when it’s worse.”

Something inside me broke… and then something new began to grow. I realised no one was coming to rescue me. I had to take control. So I reached out to health coaches, charities, people who understood pain, and communities that had lived through it. And for the first time in years, I felt something I thought I’d lost forever…

Hope.

I wasn’t going back to the old me. I was learning to live as the new me, someone who understood his pain, didn’t hide from it, and refused to let it define my future.

Why I’m Running

This brings me to now. I’m running the Milton Keynes Marathon not just as a challenge, but as a statement, to myself, to my family, and to anyone who is at the beginning of their pain journey and feels terrified, lost, or alone. I want to show them that life can still move forward.
That dreams don’t have to die because pain arrives.
That you are still capable of incredible things, even when your body makes you doubt it every single day.

Please Support My Journey

If you can donate. Thank you.


If you can share this page. Thank you.


If you can simply read my story and understand it. Thank you.

Your support helps Pain Concern reach more people living in pain, more families trying to cope, and more people who feel invisible in the healthcare system.

Together, we can give them a voice.


Together, we can change lives.


And together, we can remind people living with long-term pain that they are not alone, not now, not ever.

Thank you for standing with me.


Kieran