Mellisa Walking Marathon

A Basildon Mind service user suffered with her mental health and used Basildon Mind’s counselling service during the pandemic. It really helped! To give something back, she wanted to fundraise and donate to a mental health charity. As she now lives in London, she decided to walk a full 26-mile marathon and donate the money raised to ‘National Mind’.

She found out that ‘National Mind’ is the ‘mother’ ‘Mind’ charity, based in London. It is a different charity to ‘Basildon Mind’ who provides mental health services to local people in Basildon, Billericay and Wickford.

The London event was organised by Ultrachallenge, who has a partnership with National Mind and involved walking 26 miles around London, ending up at The Oval Cricket Ground. The event was fully mapped out and well-organised, as well as getting a funded place, participants were given fundraising packs, T-shirts, brochures and full support during the whole process, which helped make the walk successful.

On Saturday 28^th January 2023, together with her sister, she set off at 8am and finished the walk at 5:30pm. The actual walk was the culmination of 4 months of intense training: they practised on alternate Sundays, initially walking 8 miles, building up to 20 miles. This training was essential to enable them to walk the whole 26 miles.

The walk was physically challenging - much harder than they thought! On route they experienced blisters, muscle strain and body aches, but they pushed on and kept going. After finishing at The Oval, they received a medal, then stayed for a team dinner with some of the other 2000 walkers, which was great for team building.

Their mum, who works at Basildon Mind, came to London and they saw her around the half-way point and got some much-needed morale support.

Their initial target was £1000, which was raised to £1500. Ultimately, they raised £2000! The total included Gift Aid, which made people’s donations go further. They don’t know what the money will be used for, but hope it will be used to help people’s mental health.

At the moment our ex-service user is not sure about future events, whether for National Mind or another charity. However, she’s so proud of what they achieved and she would encourage other people to fundraise for something close to their hearts, if they can.