Running for Manchester Mind

On Sunday 25th August 2013 I'm running my first ever proper event, a 5K for Manchester Mind. As most of you will know I have longstanding mental health issues and I think charities like Mind are absolutely essential to help support people, reduce stigma and generally advocate for people who may find it hard to do so for themselves.

Manchester Mind are based at the Zion Community Resource Centre in Hulme and are involved in lots of different projects to help those with mental health issues such as running a cafe and growing veg for a vegbox scheme from an allotment. Put more simply, they are FAB.

Before I agreed to do this, I hadn't run for years. Like, since I was at school. And I'd never ever done distance running. In fact, I didn't do any exercise and had severe anaemia. Having this as a challenge massively helped me to sort my anaemia out with iron tablets and start getting fitter, initially following the 9 week NHS Couch to 5K podcasts. Honestly at first it was soooooo hard and I almost can't believe I've managed to stick at it. Anyway, so far I have and now I can actually run. And, even better, it's becoming a great activity to help my mental health too, sometimes replacing other more negative ways of coping and also just giving my mood a boost. That's been a huge bonus I didn't really expect!

Enough of my rambling, anything you could sponsor me would be really gratefully appreciated and would mean loads to me. And if any of you Mancunians wish to see me make a fool of myself on the day, do feel free ;). Thank you lots x