A man from South Yorkshire has completed the London Marathon to raise money for mental health in aid of his brother.
“I wasn’t thinking about the medal, I was thinking about my brother,” says Mark Ellison
When Mark Ellison crossed the finish line of last year’s London Marathon, the 42-year-old from Sheffield wasn’t chasing a personal best.
Ellison, who describes himself as “a very average runner”, signed up for the marathon in memory of his younger brother Jamie, who died in 2021 after struggling with his mental health.
“I just felt like I needed to do something that mattered,” Ellison says. “Sitting with it wasn’t helping anyone.”
Training began in January, Ellison ran through Endcliffe Park, up Ecclesall Road and along quiet suburban streets, building mileage week by week.
“There were days I hated it,” he said. “My legs hurt, my motivation disappeared, and I kept thinking, ‘Why did I sign up for this?’”
He began posting updates on social media, sharing both good runs and bad ones. Friends, colleagues and strangers soon began donating to his fundraising page.
“People started messaging me with their own stories,” he says. “That’s when it stopped being just about me.”
On race day in April, Ellison pinned a small photo of his brother to his running vest. He says it made the experience both harder and easier.
“When things got tough, I just looked down,” he said. “It reminded me why I couldn’t stop.”
Ellison completed the 26.2 miles in just over four and a half hours, raising more than £6,000 for Sheffield Mind, a local mental health charity. The money has since gone towards funding counselling sessions and community support programmes across the city.
Now back to his usual short runs, Ellison says the marathon changed the way he thinks about loss and about himself. He said the training gave him something to focus on during a time when everything else felt heavy, and helped him get through days that might otherwise have felt overwhelming.
He hopes the money raised, and the conversations that followed, will encourage people to talk more openly about mental health, especially men who often feel they have to deal with things on their own. For Ellison, the run was never about proving a point, but about doing something meaningful in his brother’s name.
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