World Mental Health Day / Running epilogue

I've had two nights of very disturbed sleep. On Saturday night I slept badly due to a combination of two days ill in bed and some nerves about the coming morning. Last night I slept badly because every time I rolled over in my sleep my aching, ruined muscles didn't respond and my brain had a panic.

After much build up Sunday morning was time for me and my brother to slip into our running shoes, pull on our extremely well fitting vests, and hit the roads around London's Royal Parks for our first ever competitive running event in the name of the excellent charity Mind. A quick run down of the day:

• London doesn't have a transport network on Sunday mornings.
• We arrived with 30 minutes until the off and got straight into a queue for the toilets, where I prepped, changed, and did my warm up. The queue was by far the source of most of the stress amongst the slower classes of runners.
• After the queue I found my brother eating all of Mind's food in a tent by himself. Apparently they know him well enough to not interrupt his meal.
• The start was a slow trudge onto the course through our funnel, followed by a short shuffle and straight onto the glorious closed roads of the capitol. It was challenging, had a few technical bits, and viewed all of London's best bits. From behind the lenses of my sunglasses the city was perfect and completely fitting for the event.
• We ran a completely respectable 2 hour 5ish minute time, starting, running, and finishing together. Individually maybe we could have done better (every slight uphill and my greater mass inhibited my running, but no one can catch me when there's food or energy drink nearby) but if I was racing for a time I wouldn't be having as much fun.
• Every 10 yards it seems there were Mind supporters or runners supporting each other. The noise was almost overwhelming at times, and aside from a few bike rides I've never seen support like this for an amateur event. It was superb.

So we ended up barely able to stand but being offered food and drink in a tent run by some truly lovely people, and all we had to do was tell people about the good work they do and run 13.1 miles. It was a fantastic day of sightseeing (hah!), stopping to sniff the flowers (double-hah) and doing something good for an incredible cause.

Thank you to the Royal Parks Foundation, but most of all Mind. We can still receive sponsorship HERE, or just click to read about them HERE.

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An addition:
Today is World Mental Health Day. You have, or could if you wanted to, read all about my own depression in this blog and how that's shaped my adolescence and now young adulthood. But I know that I'm very lucky because everywhere I turn I get supported and cared for and have never lost face by admitting I can't cope. Not everyone gets that privilege so I want to use this to thank two charities that have helped me or people I know:

The Samaritan and Mind.

The money we raised yesterday is enough to, amongst many other things, keep the Mind infoline open for 8 hours. knowing that for 8 hours one day our work will mean an invaluable service like that is there makes me very very proud of my brother and myself. Oh, and we got a medal already, thanks.