Joe's 485-mile run from South Shields to Paris

Shields Gazette

Joe Larkin, owner of South Shields-based running club Believe to Run, talks about his 13-day run from South Tyneside to Paris. People can continue to donate to Joe’s fundraiser for Space north east and Samaritans by visiting www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/joseph-larkin

Transcript

00:00It was really hard. I've done a lot of hard things in the past.

00:03I love doing hard things because I just feel like you need to struggle to grow.

00:07Hello, my name's Joe Larkin. Two weeks ago, I ran from South Shields to Paris to raise money for

00:14mental health charities, Samaritans and Space North East.

00:17It took a forging 85 mile over 13 days to reach the middle of Paris.

00:23I like helping and inspiring people, especially young lads, because being in difficult situations

00:31and facing a lot of mental adversity in my past, I know what it feels like to be

00:38feeling worthless and not strong. And this is why I do challenges like this to show people that

00:43what happens when you don't give up and there's an achievement on the other side of fear.

00:49Two years ago, I lost my grandad and we grew this bond together that we're best friends and

00:56I've got to say goodbye to him before he passed away. And the last thing I did say was I'm going

01:01to make you proud and I'm going to take you on a journey. And this is what I do all these hard

01:05things for, do my marathons, do all these hard challenges where I do struggle and I do go into

01:11a dark place during, but I know at the end when I achieve the goal, I know he's watching.

01:17And there was a lot of signs on that challenge where I knew he was there helping us. So

01:21that's what I do it for. So I started running in 2020, just before COVID started, just started

01:27off small, one mile, two mile, three mile. And I ended up just running my first marathon around

01:33the streets. I can remember I finished work. I used to work for the NHS. And I just finished work

01:40and I thought I want to push myself a little bit more and end up just running a marathon. And that's

01:45when I started to realise, other people realised I was getting really good at running and started to

01:50show my name as like this lad is actually really good at it. And that's when I started really

01:59finding out who I am as an individual and started focusing on my own mental health and realised

02:05actually I was quite really unhappy at that time as well. And I kind of just started working and

02:11putting them both together and realising how good running is for your mental health. And that's when

02:16my business came along Believe to Run because I wanted to help people as well as do my own

02:22challenges. I wanted to help people get better at running and get stronger in life because that's

02:27exactly what I've done for myself. To be honest, after the first day, it was probably the first

02:33time I ever thought, wow, can I actually do this? Because I've never really run that much consecutively

02:40every day. And I remember my first day running 38 miles, I woke up the next day and I couldn't even

02:45walk. And I thought, wow, but I just kept going every day. And it was hard. I was getting injuries.

02:52But I just knew my purpose was I was going to do this for my granddad and do this for people

02:57struggling. And that I would never ever give up. So again, it was just every day I was

03:03getting that euphoric feeling of finishing right another day closer to Paris. And once I reached

03:09the bottom of England, I thought I'm going to do it now. But it was just a life-changing experience.

03:14It was just over like a flash. But then the past couple of weeks, I've just took in a lot

03:20of gratitude of I can't believe I've just ran to Paris. But that's just fuelled us for my next

03:25mission, which will be announced very, very soon.

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