A group of Lismore locals are gearing up to participate in the Gold Coast Marathon, not just to test their physical endurance, but also to raise vital funds and awareness for mental health.

Led by brothers Liam and Elijah Kelly, this growing team is coming together with the common goal of supporting mental health initiatives.

Liam and Elijah Kelly, organisers of Marathon for Mental Health. Photo supplied.

Elijah, who was personally dealing the impact of mental health following a sporting injury, felt a need to challenge himself, so approached his brother and they began to create the group.

“I did my ACL last June when I was playing soccer, and during the three months before I got surgery in September, I had a lot of downtime to think about things,” Elijah said.

“I just got caught up in my head, it probably wasn’t that bad in reality, but at the time I’d put on a bit of weight, and I just wasn’t feeling myself.”

“So, a little bit after I had surgery in about October, I was having a chat about how I needed a goal, I needed something to work towards, and Halle (Elijah’s girlfriend) suggested I should do a big run.”

“Initially, I said I'm going to do a half marathon, and I got real excited for that, this was finally something to work towards.”

“I then told my best friend Jonas about it, and he was keen to do it too, but he got in my head when he said ‘sure, a half marathon is pretty cool, but how good would a full marathon be’ – and I said, yeah that would be unreal”

“So, that’s how we decided to do the full thing.”

Elijah had approached his brother Liam to do the marathon with them, as they had begun running together as part of his ACL rehab.

“Elijah approached me to run the marathon, as we'd both been running regularly for our physical health, his for rehab and I just wanted to get into shape,” Liam said.

“I saw it as a challenge and something to push for… at the time, I'd also realised how running was impacting my mental health in a positive way.”

“The marathon is a pretty big personal goal, but we wanted to make it about more, and make it benefit a bigger bunch of people.”

“I did some research through the Blackdog Foundation and was shocked at how many Australians are impacted by poor mental health.”

“That’s when we said, let's actually make something out of this, and we called it our Marathon for Mental Health.”

Once they decided to run the full marathon, and that they were going to raise money along the way, more and more people were interested in taking part.

“The conversation just arose naturally with people, when we told them what we were doing, and what we were doing it for, the team just started to grow,” Liam said.

“Through November, December and January we began to grow the team, and by the end of that we had like 30 people within a private Facebook group.”

“We realised that mental health and mental illness really resonates with a lot of people our age, and I think it provided a platform for people who care about it, to do something about it.”

“Within the private group, we had people regularly uploading their training, people were saying that they’d just done a 4km run, then it grew to a 5km run, and it kept building and building, and these short runs quickly increased to 10km, 15km, 20km runs.”

“Once the training was underway, we thought it was a really time to try and raise money for it, so we develop the public Facebook page - Marathon for Mental Health – with the goal of raising $2,500.”

The Gold Coast Marathon will be held 1 – 2 July, with each member of the group choosing a different length, between the full marathon, half marathon, and 10-kilometre run.

Elijah said it had been a positive experience, and a great conversation starter about their friends mental health.

“This has been the best conversation starter… the amount of conversations I've had about mental health - because you start talking about the marathon, and then it becomes about checking in, and asking how people are,” he said.

“We’re all realising that it is actually not that hard to talk about, but sometimes you do need that little kick up the butt to get it going.”

“We always hear about breaking the stigma, and we found that this initiative has been so important in breaking stigma, and has been such an easy leeway into really talking about mental health.”

“At the end of the day, it's just a whole bunch of average people wanting to achieve something bigger than themselves… and I think if we don't reach the fundraising goal, the last six months has been just an incredible opportunity to talk about it mental health and just check up on mates.”

If you would like to donate, click this link: teamblackdog.org.au/fundraisers/liamkelly/marathon-for-mental-health