Run, run, as fast as you can.

So I've spent this morning watching my gorgeous older daughter run her first half marathon.  It was indeed a lovely if not exhausting day.  I know that most of you wonder at the nonsense that is feeling exhausted from watching others run, but believe you me, whooping and clapping your hands at every 3,000 people passing by at their 10 mile point is just that - exhausting.  Have I said that word too much now?  Obviously when said daughter passed by, looking totally cool, calm and not even slightly exhausted, I whooped and clapped a lot more, but I did feel somewhat responsible to all of the other runners that my place in the day's events was to encourage them on that last 3 miles. As they got slower and slightly more random in shapes and sizes that responsibility increased and by the time the absolute last ones were passing by it was all I could do to stop myself putting them on my back and carrying them to the end, such was my desire to see them finish.  That was until it seemed that all had gone by, the end car had passed, and then I was informed that there was one more on his way, in chain mail, and surely I should wait for him.  'How long behind?' 'Another 20 minutes!'  Forget that - my desire to go and see the gorgeous girl now she'd finished took over.  However as I sit, late at night, writing this I am wondering if 'chain mail man' made it.  Maybe I let him down.

The overwhelming thought in my mind as I watched most of these 'runners' go by was the fact that they were running for someone.  For someone who was ill, who had died, who they loved, and I was filled with this enormous sense of the good that was in people to want to do something, anything, that might help.  I also pondered on the sadness that was behind their choice to compete, to join in, to try.  Amidst all my whooping and cheering I thought of their mums, their dads, their children, their friends for whom tragedy had engulfed their lives in some way.  I wondered who I might want to run for.   Alzheimer's.  Cancer.  SIDS.  Asthma.  To name just a few. Daddy.  Auntie Betty.  Kate.  Matthew. Mary. Charlotte.  George.  Billy. Me.

We're all tinged with sadness.  But for today and many other days in every year, people choose to do something about it.  To raise money, to raise awareness, to raise their own spirits.  And I for one want to whoop and cheer for them because I'm glad they do. 

Today, my daughter ran for the Matt Elvidge Trust, started by the family of a young man who took his own life,  His family and friends chose to make a difference in the lives of many, many, other young people who face depression, often unnoticed, especially men.  I'm proud of them and today, I was proud of her.