YOUR STORIES
YOUR STORIES
This page is dedicated to you—our incredible runners. It’s your space to share your journey, celebrate your achievements, and inspire others with your story. Every runner has a unique path to the finish line, facing different challenges along the way. But together, we are the Green Park Reading Half and Mini Marathon community.
If you have a story to share, we’d love to hear it! Email us at info@goldlineevents.co.uk.
MEET:
SIENNA & SUKI - DAISY'S DREAM
These two incredible young fundraisers are running the Green Park Challenge 2025 and showing just how powerful kindness can be!
Best friends Sienna (7) and Suki (8) wanted to do something special to help other children, so they signed up for the Green Park Challenge in support of Daisy's Dream Charity.
After learning about how Daisy’s Dream supports children who have lost a parent or sibling, Sienna and Suki were determined to make a difference. And wow, have they delivered—raising over £1,500!
This is what makes their challenge even more meaningful—children supporting children!
We applaud these two young girls for their kindness and commitment and wish them the best of luck on Sunday!
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Alan & Friends: Running for Royal Berks Charity
For Alan and his team—family and friends bonded for over a decade—the Reading Half Marathon is more than just a race. It’s a chance to give back to Royal Berkshire Hospital, a place that has played a huge role in their lives. With many of their parents having worked there, including Alan’s mum, a theatre nurse since 2006, and his dad still on staff today, supporting the hospital is deeply personal.
None of them are natural runners, but when one signed up, the challenge quickly became a team effort! Now, they’re lacing up, training hard, and pushing themselves to raise £2,200 for vital hospital services.
We are incredibly proud of their achievement and dedication to raising funds for such a worthy cause. Their determination and commitment deserve every bit of recognition—well done!
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EMMA - BIBS
Emma has dedicated nearly 15 years to caring for children as a nurse. Now, she leads an incredible team of children's nurses and midwives, helping recruit women and children for vital research studies at Royal Berkshire Hospital. Before joining the Royal Berks three years ago, Emma worked in Oxford as a research nurse and as a sister in children’s A&E in London.
As a research nurse and team lead, she ensures that every patient is offered research opportunities, receives the highest standard of care, and that all research regulations are met. Her team, based on Buscot Ward, is like a family—especially for long-term patients whose journeys they get to follow closely. Emma has also witnessed firsthand the incredible support that BIBS (Babies in Buscot Support) provides to families, from the moment they arrive on the unit to long after they leave.
After having to withdraw twice from the Reading Half Marathon in the past, 2025 will be third time lucky—and this time, she’ll be running proudly in a BIBS top!
Laura & Charlie's story
Berkshire mum Laura Turner was putting her two-month-old son, Charlie, into his car seat ready to leave the house for a baby music class when suddenly she was transported from an everyday situation into every parent’s worst nightmare.
Charlie’s normal newborn cry suddenly changed to a more strained sound that Laura hadn’t heard him make before. She realised with a jolt that he had stopped breathing. Quickly taking him out of his seat, Laura felt her baby was floppy and had gone a grey colour. Remembering seeing that there was blood coming out of Charlie’s nose, Laura recalls: “I thought that was it. I thought he was gone.”
At home alone, she had a moment of panic before her instincts kicked in. Laura says, “something just took over. I knew what I had to do.”
Laura had done a first aid course while pregnant with Charlie, so she knew how to give him rescue breaths. She called 999 and a few minutes later, Charlie started breathing slowly. Holding her son in the baby recovery position, Laura began the agonising wait for the emergency services to arrive. “It was only six minutes until the ambulance service and Thames Valley Air Ambulance crew got to us. But those were the longest six minutes of my life. It felt like forever.”
Once help was on hand, the rest is a blur. The Thames Valley Air Ambulance paramedics and doctors, who had arrived by helicopter, worked with South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) to get Charlie stable and he was taken to the Royal Berkshire hospital.
Laura went with Charlie in the ambulance and remembers that Charlie’s dad met them at the hospital. “It was then that I broke down”, she says, “until that point, I had no choice but to be strong for Charlie. The reality of what we had been through just suddenly dawned on me.”
Thankfully, Charlie is now a healthy, happy three-year-old. A chatty boy who loves to learn, he is thriving at pre-school.
Laura is saying thank you in a very real way this April when she runs the Unleashed Performance Reading Half Marathon. As well as finding the training positive for her physical and mental health, Laura says “I wanted to be able to give something back. I didn’t even realise Thames Valley Air Ambulance was a charity before they helped Charlie and now I want to do anything I can to help.”
Charlie has been told about what happened to him when he was a baby and is currently taking on the SCAS ‘outrun the ambulance’ challenge on his bike, accompanying Laura on her training runs.
Who is betting against Charlie being the loudest cheerer of all, in the stadium on April 3rd?
