Why I'm Running the Bath Half Marathon (And Why I'm Uncomfortable Asking You to Sponsor Me)
Every single person I've spoken to on a Samaritan phone line - the prisoners, the suicidal, the self-harmers, the isolated, the vulnerable, the lonely - is no different from me save for a couple of unlucky forks in the road. That's what four months of answering calls has taught me: we are all one or two bad decisions, one redundancy, one bereavement, one diagnosis away from needing what the Samaritans gives. Not might need. Will need.
I started my Samaritans journey halfway through 2025, went through the training, and began answering calls towards the end of the year. In those months I've sat with people in their darkest moments - I'll never know who they are, they'll never know who I am - and here's what I know with absolute certainty: the gap between 'yet' and 'now' is thinner than any of us want to believe.
That service is offered for free, and the Samaritans who answer those phone lines have no expectation of getting anything in return. Absolutely none. When the phone goes down, they know nothing about what happens to that person, and short of being able to tell their friends about it in the vaguest terms, they get nothing back. That, in my mind, is as close to altruism as you can get.
Which brings me to why I'm writing this, and why I'm profoundly uncomfortable doing so.
On Sunday 15th March 2026, I'm running the Bath Half Marathon to raise money for the Samaritans. Here's the thing that makes asking for sponsorship awkward: I can run 13 miles. It's not a stretch for me. I'm not climbing Everest, I'm not running a marathon whilst disabled, I'm not doing something that pushes the boundaries of my physical capability. Running 13 miles is well within what I can do, and normally when you sponsor someone you're backing them to do something genuinely difficult, something that requires sacrifice and suffering and genuine achievement.
But the only reason I'm running that half marathon is to represent the Samaritans, to raise money and give something back to an organisation that does work so vital and so invisible that most people don't think about it until they need it. The challenge isn't the distance - the challenge is standing up publicly for something that matters when it would be easier to stay quiet.
Because staying quiet would be easier. I had a conversation recently with someone on my Samaritans cohort who doesn't tell people she's a volunteer. There was someone she grew up with, her best friend, someone she'd shared everything with, and she wanted to tell her about becoming a Samaritan not because she wanted to elevate herself but because of what it meant to her and because she had a sense that this friend would be an amazing Samaritan herself. By pure coincidence, her friend mentioned she'd thought about becoming a Samaritan, and suddenly the conversation became a catalyst for her to actually get involved.
When I reflected on that, I realised I do tell people I'm a Samaritan, and not because of ego - though it would be a lie to say there isn't a small part of that - but because it does three things that matter to me.
It creates breadcrumbs for conversations that wouldn't otherwise happen. I was meeting someone in a hotel in Bath a few weeks ago, and afterwards I got chatting to the doorman. When he asked what I was doing that afternoon, I said I was going to do a shift at work, and when he pressed me I told him I was doing a Samaritan shift. This led to a conversation about his sister and her mental health struggles, about how he and his friends had been there for her, and how she'd said years later that one of the most important things for getting through that difficult phase was the fact that they were there for her, that connection, and on top of that she'd used the Samaritans and that ability to have someone there to not feel lonely and isolated was profound for her. Had I not told him I was a Samaritan, we wouldn't have had that incredibly connecting conversation where he was sharing something vulnerable and open and honest.
It anchors my professional work in something real. I do business turnaround, crisis intervention, business transformation, and I talk to people constantly about alignment and ensuring everything they do is consistent with who they are at heart. It's all well and good to say those words when you meet people for the first time, but telling someone you're a Samaritan demonstrates you invest your time asking nothing in return. For me, being a Samaritan is living that alignment myself, and hopefully that builds credibility with the people I meet.
And quite frankly, the Samaritans need volunteers. As with all charities, there's a constant revolving door, and we need people who want to answer the phones because the role the Samaritans does for people in society who are isolated and lonely is unbelievably valuable at a time when community is as weak as it's arguably ever been.
Every single Samaritan I've met can vividly recall phone calls they've had. They carry those conversations in their hearts on an ongoing basis, and they will never leave them. These aren't vacuous arm's-length conversations - these are individuals answering the phone in their own time, choosing to put themselves in positions of vulnerability so that others have a place when the system has failed them, when they have no one in their life they can be truly honest with, when they have no one they can talk to and be listened to without judgement or without being given advice. There is always a Samaritan answering the phone, it doesn't matter what time of day or what time of night, there are always Samaritans waiting to take those calls. Sometimes they have to put up with misuse, abuse, and nonsense, but the vast majority of the time they help people by answering the phones, and the burden they carry is real and it's permanent.
For me it is an absolute honour to be able to say I am a Samaritan and I stand alongside these beautiful individuals answering the phone to other beautiful individuals who are just in slightly less fortunate positions.
Being a Samaritan has opened up a whole world, both in terms of what I know about society now and what I know about myself, that I didn't have before. For that reason, I am truly indebted to the Samaritans.
So I'm running the Bath Half Marathon on Sunday 15th March 2026, not because it's physically difficult for me, but because I want to give something back to an organisation that gives everything and asks for nothing, because I want to encourage others to talk, to share, to listen and to be listened to, and because if you're reading this and thinking about becoming a Samaritan yourself, I want you to know it will change you in ways you cannot anticipate and it is worth every second.
If you'd like to sponsor me to contribute to all the work the Samaritans does, please do. And if this has made you think about becoming a Samaritan yourself, please reach out - the challenge isn't the run, the challenge is standing up and saying this matters, and I'm asking you to stand with me.