This is for Shawn – who’d have laughed like a drain
The Telegraph’s Matthew Fearn explains his special motivation for running today’s London Marathon
Why are you running the London Marathon?” is the question people often ask, with a mixture of admiration and incredulity. For me and the 40,000odd other participants – young and old, costumed or not, elite or very much amateur – nervously lining up in Greenwich Park this morning, it’s something we’ve probably asked ourselves. And all our answers will be slightly different.
My motivation came last summer, in the form of a friend and colleague here at the The Telegraph, Shawn Russell. It was long before I even owned running trainers, let alone could tackle 26.2 miles. As the newspaper’s picture editor, I am in charge of a brilliant, supportive team of photojournalists who oversee the images you see in print and online, as well as all our world-class photographers. It’s a busy job, but we’re a small, close-knit bunch, and have come to rely on one another.
Until last June, Shawn was my deputy. Gangly, broad, noisy and energetic, he was a larger-than-life character in every respect, with a Tigger-ish enthusiasm asm for his life and work, a bone-dry ne-dry sense of humour and a superhuman uperhuman calmness under pressure. ressure.
He had a real gift: ft: a combination of being ing the most popular and hardest-working man in the newsroom, and an incredibly creative eye for the e right picture in the right place, at the right time.
We were close. In fact, I spent more ore time awake with Shawn than I did my family. And we saw each other at our best and worst. At our best, I would be laughing as Shawn mocked me for my perceived poor choice in rugby team (Coventry RFC, which he sarcastically called “the mighty Cov”) or my perceived poor choice in music (Status Quo, “the mighty Quo”). At our worst, we’d be grumpily bickering over the next day’s picture selection. Shawn was normally right. There wasn’t a more creative picture editor on Fleet Street.
On Wednesday, March 22 2017, Shawn worked what would be his last day at The Telegrap Telegraph. It was the day of the Westminst Westminster Bridge attack – one of the biggest bigg domestic news stories of last year. He seemed on top form, as ever, e and put together an incredibly powerful package. Around t that time, though, he’d be been feeling some tightn tightness in his chest, so h had been checked ou out by a doctor. The re results came back that sa same Wednesday, u urgently summoning hi him to University Co College Hospital. It was agg aggressive leukaemia, the same illness that had take taken his mother, Leslie, when he was a baby. Shaw Shawn was only 45. To him, t the diagnosis was just a an inconvenience, and t that can-do spirit mad made us all on the picture des desk certain we’d have him back bouncing around the office as soon as his treatment finished. I visited him once a week, sometimes to take him get-well-soon gifts from The Telegraph, like a personalised Matt cartoon, but mainly just to sit and chat.
One Saturday night in June, my phone rang. He had suffered a massive stroke, affecting all his major organs, and had about 24 hours left to live. With Sarah, his partner, holding his hand, Shawn died the next day.
For all of us who knew and loved him, the shock, frustration and sadness was almost overwhelming. At work, we held memorials, raised our glasses and published his obituary, but I wanted to turn that grief into something positive. Then, in October, after being inspired by a colleague’s fitness transformation, I decided to pair a diet with some exercise. So I bought those trainers.
On day one, I managed about one mile, but slowly, I started to get better and enjoy myself. Before I knew it, it was a fixed part of my routine, and our office marathon extraordinaire, Bryony Gordon – who is also out there this morning, albeit in slightly fewer clothes – told me I should join her in doing London. I decided to run for Leukaemia Care, to raise money for families affected by the illness that stole Shawn from us. The response to my fundraising page has been phenomenal; a mark of just how popular he was.
If he could have seen me, limping around north London at 5am in midwinter, Shawn would have laughed like a drain. In those dark times, I tried not to think of him. Not just because he’d cackle at my misfortune, but to save him for today.
This morning, he’ll be running with me every step of the way, helping me along right down to the finish. There, my wife, three children, my in-laws and my father will be watching on with astonishment at the pasty, foodobsessed bloke they know completing this mammoth challenge. And alongside them, I am delighted that Sarah will be cheering me on, too.
I hope I can do it for all of them, but the real reason I am running the London marathon? It’s simple. For my old mate Shawn, whom we still miss every day.