Hailsham Man’s Mental Health Marathon Challenge

In September 2011, he had a breakdown and this led to him disappearing into himself for days or weeks on end, including a 12-month period when he was was unable to work, which caused more depression and hardship for his family.

He says, “fortunately, I have a very supportive wife, Michelle and an adorable son, Edwin, and several close friends who have helped me hugely and as I came out of that bad period I started running, having read that it can help with depression.  

“I later joined the Hailsham Harriers running club, and after 12 months completed my first marathon, having set myself the goal of running the 100k London to Brighton, which I did in just over 17 hours and raised £1,000 for Mind, the mental health charity.

“Over the next 18 months I ran regularly, training with the Harriers and completing marathons and ultra-marathons.  This all helped me fight my personal ‘black dog’.

“In November 2016 I decided to set the challenge of running 1 mile for every ‘date’ in the month so on the 1st I ran 1 mile, 10th I ran 10 miles, 14th 14 miles etc.

“All of this was with the goal of raising awareness around mental health issues and challenging the stigma that is associated with depression which I did through social media and local events pages, telling my story and the battles I’ve had.

“Unfortunately, on the 23rd, 270 miles into the 465-mile challenge I tore the cartilage in my left knee, this was the end of the challenge but not of my goals.

“So, in April of this year I started my new challenge to raise awareness of mental health issues and I felt the best way to do this was to run the 52 in 52 challenge.  That’s 52 marathons in 52 weeks. So far I have run 20 of the 52 Marathons and will soon reach the half way point.

“My aim is to set up a charity to train myself and/or another person to go into schools, talk to groups and clubs anywhere to say – ‘we can all suffer from depression and it’s ok to talk about it’ and to provide Mental Health First Aid training, I believe that the earlier mental health issues can be tackled the better we will be able to minimise the impact to individuals and families but most importantly by opening up a conversation where its ok to talk about mental health we can change attitudes.

“I set up a ‘Crowdfunding’ page which ran for four months and over that time I raised about £700.00 to help with the costs of the challenge which will be around £2500.  I have applied to the Charity Commission to set up this charity, which I hope will, like myself, run and run, this will allow further donations to be made through the Just Giving page.”

Adrian has a Facebook page with over 1200 followers where he reports on each marathon as he is doing it and shares his thoughts and feelings. If you don’t use Facebook just search the internet for ‘Adrian Thomas 52in52‘.