Why I Run

Last year I ran the Disneyland Paris half marathon to raise money for the charity Mind. This year I will return to Paris and run all three races (5k, 10k & half marathon) for the same cause.
I shall try and explain the reasons I am doing this in this post, as a warning to anyone reading I will be talking about depression and suicide so if that would upset you please stop reading.

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Seany O'Meara (My Uncle) was born on the 9th April 1969. His influence on my life is immense, just some of the interests he has introduced me to are:

• Theme Parks - Seany took me and my sister to our first ever theme park, Alton Towers. If you know me at all I don't need to explain the impact on my life this had, (if unsure just scroll through my twitter for a minute) from getting engaged at Disneyland Paris to getting married at Disney World and everything in between, the yearly trips with Seany, Nanny & Grampy are what started everything. (Even if half the day was taken up my travel, he was not the quickest driver!)
• Music - While very young I was introduced to Seany's music collection, he was a DJ at night. Thousands of vinyl records, CD's and tapes were stored in his house and we even saw Eminem live at the Bowl. Long before the days of streaming he would always be able to predict what would be number one in the charts.
• Animation - Mum wouldn't let me watch South Park but luckily Seany would record it on VHS off Channel 4 every Friday night so we could watch when we went round. Also helped that there was a massive back catalog of all Disney films and lots of Hanna-Barbera compilations (care of Nanny) always available.
• Video Games - I think I'm the only person but I actually enjoyed played ET on the Atari 2600. Many hours were spent with the Atari hooked up to the world smallest TV (which had an actual dial to change the channels). Seany worked in the local shopping centre so whenever a new Playstation game came out I knew I could rely of him picking it up for me, and every birthday I could pick a game from the Platinum Collection.

I'm going to presume most of you have worked out where this is going but some may be wondering why I am telling you this. Seany took his own life in early 2017, years before he had been diagnosed with clinical depression. During his last years he was a completely different person, he was convinced that there must be something physically wrong with him and that it couldn't be a mental health issue.
He had always lived on his own since my Nan (his Mum) passed away and, purely my opinion with absolutely no medical knowledge on my side, towards the end it just seemed like he couldn't cope with ageing. Some people are just not meant for this world it seems.

So I run to keep his memory alive and to raise money for Mind, mental health is extremely underfunded in this country so the more cash we can raise for charity the more help people who need it can receive.

I managed the half marathon last year in a time of 2:46:26 which was slower than I wanted but I did sprain the ligaments in my ankle a couple of months before the race which set me back quite a bit in the training. This year on top of the half marathon on the Sunday I will also be running a 5k on the Friday and a 10k on the Saturday, even with these extra runs I hope to improve on my time.
If you want to follow my progress please follow my Instagram.

Last year I managed to raise £3,060.34 and this year the total is already at £691.95 with over a month to go. Every little helps and if you cannot afford to donate please just share my link:

https://justgiving.com/RunDisneyJames36k

This post has been a bit heavy so to cheer things up my current total for this year is 69% of my target. *wink* *wink*