On the 29th April 2002 my best friend Tim Daines died suddenly whilst playing football. The doctors could not find anything that would have caused his death, and at the Inquest the coroner came to a verdict of natural causes. Although they did say his death was caused by a cardiac problem.

Tim’s family and friends were absolutely devastated by his death that was so sudden, and to start with was totally unexplained.

Tim was 30 years old and extremely fit and healthy. He ate good food, didn’t smoke, exercised regularly and was immensely strong.

His life was going really well, he crammed so much into it; working hard as a builder, playing football, going to the gym, spending time with his girlfriend Kirsty and still coming out with the boys.

He had met the girl he wanted to settle down with in Kirsty. He had said to me, only on the day he died, that it wouldn’t be long before he had a family. This was amazing to hear because not long ago he would have scoffed at any suggestion of marriage or children. But he was so happy with Kirsty that his mind was made up. They were looking forward to moving in together, and he had the possibility of a bit of land becoming available on which he might have been able to build his own house. He was excited about this and had drawn sketches of the house and how it might look, in the weeks before he died. He was a respected and skilled bricklayer and will be missed both professionally and as a friend by those that worked with him.

It was a huge shock to everyone when he died. Most people, me included, found it very hard to believe and very difficult to cope with.

Tim was a real true friend and I’m lucky enough to have known him for most of his life. He would joke sometimes that he was going to write a book on the stuff we used to get up to one day! It has been hard to come to terms with his death, and I will never forget the good times that we all had when Tim was around.

Over the last few years I have applied to do the London Marathon, but never got in, and last year was no exception, once again I got the ‘not this time’ envelope. As I looked through the magazine I saw CRY’s advert and decided to get in touch. When Tim had died a friend had given me some printouts from CRY’s website, but to be honest I wasn’t really interested at the time. But now some months later, looking through the CRY stuff again I decided I must run for them. When I spoke to them they said that all the places had gone, unless I wanted to run in a big red heart costume…ha ha I thought …bring it on!!

I had begun doing a bit of training back in November, doing about 4 or 5 miles 3 times a week, but once I found out I was in I thought I’d better step it up a bit. I started doing 6 miles 3 times a week and was feeling really strong, running really hard all the way at a fast pace. By mid / end of January I had built up to about 10 miles. When I got past 10 miles things started to go wrong, I really began to struggle and the runs became really hard from start to finish. I felt awful, and in February I did a 10k race which I struggled to get round! But I had a week or so off training and afterwards carried on with the longer distances and began to feel a bit fresher. By mid March I had reached 16 miles two or three times a week, this run took about 2 hours usually. To start with they were really hard but towards the day they became a little easier. I didn’t go any further though on the Monday before I did 18 miles, this was a killer! So I rested the rest of the week until the day.

We travelled up to London the day before on the train and stayed at a hotel. The day was absolutely amazing I couldn’t believe how many people were making their way to the start and what a huge event it was. On the way to the start people were asking about how heavy it was and stuff like that, and a young lady even asked if she could take a photo of me carrying the costume.

It was really exciting at the start even though it took me 9 minutes to cross the line. I began weaving my way through the crowd without exerting myself too much. On the application form I had estimated my time as 4 hours, but really hoped to go under. But I realised when I got to the 5-mile marker at 56 minutes, that 4 hours was going to be very difficult to do. Just before the 5-mile marker I had seen Tim’s family and Kirsty, they were really cheering me on and there was a big group of them. I stopped briefly and it was a bit emotional.

I stepped the pace up, overtaking at any opportunity, hopping up on the kerb if there was a gap, and sprinting for about 30 metres before I had to skip back on to the road. I was probably overtaking about 100 or 200 people at a time but that is nothing in the marathon!

It was important to me to get a reasonable time, Tim appreciated good sporting achievement, and I’d done a lot of training on those dark evenings after work. I knew that Tim would be proud of me if I went quick. He had come to watch me do the Great South Run twice and it had been great, as always, to have him there. He used to say, ” Cor Rob if you ever do that London Marathon you’ll have to train properly, it’s nearly three times as far as the Pompey run! ” I thought of stuff like this during the run and thought of Tim a lot; at times I was a bit choked. The crowd were great, and I noticed because my name was on the costume they cheered me on – “come on Robert! ” This was a bit of a surprise really and I would wave back which made them cheer even more! I was running along smiling and laughing a lot of the time! And at one point a woman next to me asked me if I was famous!!

Somewhere at the 15 mile point I was overtaken by Mark, another CRY heart runner; he had much better technique of getting through the field and I kept up with him. He made me pick my pace up a bit; I couldn’t lose him in the costume! I hope I didn’t upset anyone, because we were kind of steaming through, and I may have bumped a few people a bit, but the costume was a good buffer!

At 18 miles I realised I was running further than I ever had before and I didn’t feel too bad, although I was getting a bit sunburnt. But at 22 miles I was really feeling the strain, and I wasn’t overtaking so many people. About this point a strange thing happened, a runner next to me pointed out Roger Black on the course. I spoke to the runner without looking at him for a bit, when I did look at him, it was a friend of mine who lives locally. This was a huge surprise and kind of freaked us out a bit! I had seen a few people I knew on the way round in the crowd and my friends that had come up as well.

Over the last few miles I was very tired and it was the crowd that kept me going, I think I kind of milked the applause a bit! They were shouting, “come on heart, come on tomato, or smiley face” and I loved it. Tim’s photo on the front of my suit started to come off so I had to hold it on so I finished the marathon holding Tim’s photo. The official time was 4.03.57.

The hardest part of the day was afterwards; getting around the park, the journey across London and home, I was absolutely exhausted.

Now as I look back it was well worth it; we raised just under £5000 for CRY. This was with a lot of help from many people who took forms and helped collect sponsorship and money. People were very helpful and generous in helping reach this amount, so a big thank you is due to them. Hopefully it can go towards helping to prevent tragic deaths like that of my best mate Tim.

Robert O’Brien