A group of 33 third-year boys have raised over $50k and counting for the Spark That Chat mental health campaign while training for the Emerson’s Dunedin Marathon in September. We note that that’s enough to pay for all the stolen road cones.
Will, Josh, Jamie and Sam, four boys from the group dubbed the ‘Heavy Breathers’, spoke to Critic Te Ārohi about the mahi they’ve put in so far and what it’s meant to them.
Like all good ideas, the Heavy Breathers were formed ten weeks ago out of a tipsy conversation at a 21st. “It just kind of spiralled out over this one night and then all of a sudden we had thirty [boys] locked in a week later,” said Jamie. “It all happened pretty quickly. Good to see we actually did it rather than just talking about it because there’s too many of those.” Will laughed at that, joking he should have “been to Bali three times” if that were always the case.
Their chosen charity, Spark That Chat, is an annual campaign run by MSFT Productions. It’s described as a way to “get people talking, destigmatise the way we discuss mental health, and promote positivity, resilience, and mental well-being to save lives.” Jamie explained, “It’s kind of like a different way instead of going into an office to do one-on-one therapy, it’s opening doors for people to do cool things outside and find something that they like.”
Jamie said that they liked the idea of changing the “third-year Dunedin drinking narrative to just giving the marathon a crack and just turn it around from what most parents probably think Dunedin’s like.” Will added, “We’re not saying we’re not a part of that. We all love it, you know, we’re still going out… but there’s a few individuals at those parties on occasion that causes the entire cohort to be perceived badly. And I think that what we’re trying to do is show that there’s also individuals at that party who are going out and trying to do something, and we’re not the only ones.”
So rather than the usual “the old you would have” mantra of breathas, peer pressure has turned on its head. “As soon as someone sends in a 15km run from the morning, there’s five more [boys] looking at their phones thinking, ‘Oh, we need to get out for a run,’” said Josh. “And then they’ll do it and all of a sudden there’s six runs in the group chat.” As of time of writing, the boys have logged 3,200 kms in training - that’s twice the length of Aotearoa.
Their training kicked into an even higher gear when one of the boys recently lost their brother to suicide. In a post on the group’s Facebook page, they said, “We started this running journey with the goal of raising awareness for men’s mental health, but not all of us had been affected by such loss so close to home.” Jamie said that “we just can’t talk about it enough now, to be honest,” said Jamie. “Me and my flatmates in general, it’s just like talking so much more about everything. There’s nothing off the books.”
“Every third-year at some point in Dunedin, every man has at some point just not been feeling themselves, you know? And even though we’re told all the time that we can and we can and we can, you have to see it to believe it,” said Will. “I’ve always known the boys could support [me] and you could go to them for anything, but you still don’t.” Training together in the name of mental health, though, made them realise how much of shared experience those feelings are. “There’s just been this sense of comradery throughout the group and it really feels like everyone’s just like a hundred percent got your back within the group… So, yeah, I think it means a lot to all of us to be honest.”
Besides Josh and a couple other boys in the group, they wouldn’t necessarily have described themselves as runners before taking on the challenge. “We’ve all never really run over 10km before to be honest,” Jamie laughed. That was part of the reason they opted for the full marathon rather than the half: “It’s a challenge,” said Will. “But I think for a lot of us it was like, you know, three years in Dunedin can do a thing to someone and I think we just wanted to put ourselves back into positions where were feeling good about ourselves, but also doing something that would be good for other people as well… a silver lining for both parties.” They all agreed they’d “discovered the runner’s high” in the process.
Originally having set their sights on raising $10k, the group had to keep upping their goal as the support’s poured in. As the date approaches, Jamie said that they’re “all pretty fizzed… I think everyone’s kind of freaking out as well,” though Will said that “all the boys have adopted the same mindset of like, it doesn’t really matter what time you’re finishing, but you’ve gotta finish. We’ve had too many people backing us now that we can’t back out.” The boys wanted to express a “massive thanks to everyone that’s gotten behind us” including Shoe Clinic who sponsored them all training kit. “It’s been unreal, and we’ll keep running.”