Lewes AC runner raises nearly £3,000 for mental health

“After my father died last year,” says Mark, “my half-sister brought over a small pot of his ashes from the US and, when we talked about where to sprinkle them, the obvious answer seemed to be the village of Dunster in Somerset, where he had spent some of his happiest years as a schoolboy evacuee from wartime London.

"Then, when I discovered that there was an ultra marathon taking place there this August, it seemed even more obvious that I should run the race in his memory and try to raise some money for charity at the same time. And of course, given his profession, Mind was the obvious charity to choose.

"It all just seemed like fate so, to be honest, I didn’t even look at the route before I signed up.”

In the event, the 30-mile Exmoor-based run turned out to be challengingly hilly, with a total elevation of over 4,000ft – equal, the race organisers estimated, to about three times the height of Ben Nevis.

But, as well as taking the runners down to the coast at Minehead and then up onto the hills above Porlock, the route also ended up leading Mark right past the little rose-coloured thatched cottage where his father had lived during the war – “a wonderful coincidence that really spurred me on towards the finish line!” And the next morning he went back there to sprinkle his father’s ashes into the waters of the millstream that runs past the end of the street.

The fact that Mark, now 67, completed the challenge at all is perhaps all the more remarkable because he only started running seven years ago, three years after having a triple heart bypass – “the result of my taking no exercise at all since leaving school and basically sitting on my arse for 40 years, eating too much cake!”

But, if the heart op was a wake-up call, it was Lewes AC, he says, that turned him into a runner. “I owe it all to my friend Colin, who persuaded me to sign up for the club’s 0-to-5K beginners’ running course, and also to the wonderful club coaches Bev and Siobhan, who led the classes back then and coaxed me gently through to running my very first 5K parkrun exactly a month after my 60th birthday.”

Since then he has run many more parkruns, plus a few marathons and other ultras as well – and, having recently qualified as an England Athletics-licensed running coach, he now leads Lewes AC’s twice-yearly beginners’ classes himself.

“Running really has changed my life, making me not just healthier and happier, but bringing me lots of wonderful new friends that I’ve met purely as a result of being part of the local running community. So I’m quite evangelical about spreading the word!

"And, whether you just want to run the occasional 5K or build up towards running a marathon, 50K or even longer distances sometime in the future, running in the open air really is the easiest way to get fit and healthy, and you’re almost guaranteed to make new friends in the process!”

Lewes AC’s Autumn Beginners Running Course takes place at 9.00am on Saturday mornings from 2 September to 4 November, based at the Southdown Sports Club on Cockshut Road, and costs just £30 for all 10 sessions. For details and booking, visit www.lewesac.co.uk/beginners