One split decision A LIFETIME OF CHANGE

For Sam Palmer, dealing with grief was a marathon, not a sprint

- JOHANNA BELL

Grief can make us do funny things. Our family had just laid my younger brother Simon to rest when I was asked to run a marathon in his memory - had I not been in the depths of despair, I'd have laughed. I wasn't a runner. Sure, I'd been cajoled into a half-marathon years earlier, but I'd been in my 20s then, able to blag it on very little training. Now I was 30 with two children, yet I found myself agreeing, desperate for something to help me to cope with the pain. In the end, that split-second, wild decision to train for a marathon from scratch didn't just help me to grieve, but gave me everything I didn't know I wanted.

Simon and I were like any other brother and sister growing up. Along with our younger brother Samuel we were close, but it wasn't until we reached adulthood that our friendship truly blossomed. He loved being uncle to my two boys and we grew closer. Simon joined the Royal Irish Hussars in 1990, aged 23. When he was called up to fight in the Gulf War later that year, I was filled with both pride and fear, which turned to relief when he returned unscathed and left the Army to work in London. I cheered him on when he ran the London Marathon in April 1996. Like me, he wasn't an established runner and I suspect also like me - he agreed to take part without thinking it through. Still, he finished in a respectable time of 4hrs 12mins.