Suicide and the destructive past it leaves behind
A couple of weeks ago Anytime Fitness held a national 24 hour treadmill event. This event was created to raise funds for Suicide Prevention Australia and PPP4SPA with 450 clubs open nationally we were hoping to really make a difference. Anyone who wanted to jump on the treadmill for 15 minutes donated $15 dollars. I decided to involve my club at Seaford in this as I have lost a few people in my life to suicide. I have also had many of my immediate family struggle with attempting to take their own life and I have also tried to take mine on multiple occasions, so this is something that resonated deeply with me.
I am very lucky to have such an incredible team behind me at the club to promote this event. I even had my club Manager Abbi Cousins step up and stay the full 24 hours with me.
This wasn’t mandatory but she knew I wanted to make sure I was here the whole time and she wanted to support me.
We were also incredibly lucky to have a ton of members and non-members step up and get on the treadmill. It was pretty incredible to see members who had trained earlier in the day rock up at 1am and do an hour on the treadmill to help out as they knew Abbi and I would be exhausted.
The list of members is too long to mention every person, but I will name one in particular; Lenny Carlier. Lenny was a personal trainer at my club and also one of my close friends, he did something incredible.
Lenny did 10 hours straight on the treadmill.
That, in itself, is amazing; but he stepped it up another notch and wore a weighted vest for the duration, adding 5kgs every 3 hours to show respect to the fact that an Aussie suicides every 3 hours. He was sore after to say the least.
It was an amazing night though, as Abbi and myself got to see our night owl members and start the conversation about suicide. Hopefully prompting them to ask their friends the question "are you ok?”.
My club alone raised an impressive $2057.67 and Anytime Fitness raised over $370,000 nationally. This is something that I hope to see become an annual event!
If you or someone you love is in crisis or needs support, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14, the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467, or BeyondBlue on 1300 224 636.
If it is an emergency please call 000.