On October 15th 2023, I will be running the Manchester Half-Marathon in an attempt to finally destroy my knees once and for all AND to raise money for Mind.

JustGiving will send your money directly to the charity, so it's the most efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

The rest of this section will be a discussion of my mental health which might not be an easy read - don't even get me started on the quality of the prose - so feel free to skip this part because the actual information is all above.

I started running about 3 years ago at the recommendation of friends and family (though I will say you got closer to pestering, Chris) as a way to improve my mental and physical state. Though there was an immediate improvement in both, later that year began the most difficult period of my life as anxiety overtook everything. Mentally and physically I was exhausted by a near constant state of panic and discomfort which affected how I ate, how I interacted with others, how I handled school. Going about my life felt more like a conscious journey (and a fraught one) than an unconscious mode.

Growing up comfortably middle class, in the company of the disgustingly kind-hearted and (hopefully) charitable, didn't make me immune to a decline in mental health, but with massive waiting lists making costly therapeutic services the only viable option and the long-standing stigmas around psychiatry, especially in relation to men, having the finances and the encouragement to get the help I needed put me in a very fortunate position. But change is possible if we want it to be. Mind takes the challenge head on and provides support and information to those who need it, and, until systemic change is achieved, their work is invaluable. On a personal level, once I regained the strength to be proactive about change, running provided me the opportunity to push myself and to really feel better.

It holds true for running as it does for life to say that it is often hard to go out and do it, and to find it in yourself to do it may just lead you into more hardship, more pain, into the very things you were afraid of it being; worse still, by the end of some struggle you may find yourself asking whether it was worth doing. But if I imagine myself at 17, desperately pushing for each second, I only have to look up and watch the figure blowing past, whose eyes are locked on a distance I can't see and know that he remembers how it felt and remembers asking whether it was worth it and remembers doing it again.

TL;DR - Money, please