Mental health & running

Dan Wilson-Brown works as a software engineer at BT, a cyclist and an on-call fire fighter. He is the voluntary leader for the East Anglian region for Run Talk Run. The Ipswich group meets on the Ipswich waterfront and in Felixstowe it will be held on the prom.

“Run Talk Run offers a free peer support running club where we create a safe space to talk about our mental health, our good days and our bad days, and we do it while we run at a pace where it is comfortable to talk. We are a mental health support group first and the running is a bit on the side really!  We run at the slowest pace and it doesn’t matter if you have to have a little walk in the middle.

I’m limiting the groups to twelve runners and there are office workers, students, BT colleagues…a real mix of male and female, of all ages and abilities.

Run Talk Run is a Community Interest Company and there are lots of groups in London. Because of my own previous issues with my mental health, I thought it was a great idea and when I had days working in the city, I would tag along to the evening sessions. That was my nearest group.

When lockdown came along, I re-evaluated lots of things, including how low I had been the past and how well I had processed this global pandemic. I decided I would set up a group here.

There is such a huge link between what the hospice are doing with Community Conversations and Run Talk Run. I come from up North and there’s a mentality there that you just ‘get on with it’. I had to deal with a lot of death in my family in a short space of time and I just didn’t process it, and that ultimately led to my de-grade in mental health.

I think a safe space like Run Talk Run is hugely important. It’s like informal counselling. You might be talking to a student or a professional illustrator, but you are treated with respect and there is no judgement… and its free."

Discover Run Talk Run here.