How running is helping children build more confidence, one marathon at a time

Hindustan Times

27-04-2025

Children are being inspired to become healthier, happier and more confident by a group of teachers who are running the TCS London Marathon on Sunday. The 14 Team TCS Teachers all use running to help children improve their fitness and their self-esteem.
Some of the schools are taking children to central London on Saturday for the TCS Mini London Marathon, where students can run, jog, walk, or wheel one mile or 2.6km ending at the same finish line on The Mall that marathon runners will cross the following day.
Others are organising a similar event at their school to encourage children to get active. Featherstone Primary School, in Southall, west London, holds a weekly running club and deputy headteacher Graham Cooksey said his marathon training has encouraged children to run at other times too. 'I started running in the playground, doing a bit of training. Next thing I know, I've got 20-30 children following me,' he told the PA news agency.
'That's a real honour to say my decision to enter the marathon has had this knock-on effect.' He added: 'The children are healthier, are happier, they are achieving more. They sleep better, so the parents are going to be happy. It's a real community thing.' Children competed to decide who would run in central London on Saturday, with badges and certificates for everyone who tried out.
'We've seen a lovely positive spin-off from just one person entering the marathon to 25 other little people entering, with parents being involved, other children ready to be in the reserves if anybody wants to not join in. Lots of lovely outcomes from this,' Mr Cooksey said. 'We discovered some amazing talent. There's one boy who attends a local running club, he's going to be a star in the future. If he's not the next Mo Farah, I do not know, he's so talented.'
The Mini London Marathon was first held in 1985 and Sir Mo Farah, Eilish McColgan, David Weir and Keely Hodgkinson are among those who have taken part. Mr Cooksey, 49, who has worked at the school since 2007, added: 'It would be lovely if their mini marathon entry could be the same thing like Keely Hodgkinson and Mo Farah had. 'That would be a dream to see them in the future. But for now, they are really enjoying it.'
Mr Cooksey, who ran as a student at Sandbach High School in Cheshire, started running again during the Covid-19 lockdowns and turned to long-distance running when his colleague and friend Georgie Jones-Pagaduan was diagnosed with cancer. Her husband, Greg Pagaduan, persuaded him to run from London to Brighton for charity, and running became 'a channel for coping with the grief' when Mrs Jones-Pagaduan died in 2017.
'I realised that was the time when you could go very inside yourself and you might have some darker thoughts and darker times, and I definitely had those,' he told PA. 'It's through running I found an outlet that's very healthy.' Mr Cooksey's marathon will also be inspired by his late Nanny Parry, Anne, who died in 2020 from cancer, and he will wear images of both women on his T-shirt on Sunday, which would have been Mrs Jones-Pagaduan's 41st birthday.
'Both Georgie and my nan were very strong women and very inspiring. At times when it could be very low for them and very hard, they didn't show it,' he said. 'When I'm feeling a bit of a twinge or a niggle or it hurts, I've no excuse. You've got to keep going.' A highlight of his marathon training was joining other Team TCS Teachers at a question and answer session at London's Olympic Park with Paula Radcliffe, who he said was 'one of my personal heroes'.
Tanzeela Khalid, 29, a Year 2 teacher at Nelson Primary School in Ladywood, Birmingham, said meeting others at the workshop had calmed her nerves about running her first marathon. Miss Khalid hopes to inspire children to believe that sport and exercise can be for everyone. 'When I was growing up, even driving down the road, I could rarely see anyone like me running,' Miss Khalid, who wears a hijab, told PA.
'When you see sports as well, I didn't see people who look like me taking part in sport.' The school has a large proportion of students from Arab, black, and South Asian backgrounds and she said: 'For the children in my classroom to see me taking part, it inspires them like 'Miss Khalid's doing it, so we can do it too'.' She added: 'I just want to inspire others to run. Running is a sport for everyone, it's inclusive.
Everyone can give it a go, it doesn't matter what religion, what age, what gender you are, everyone can run. And if you run, you're a runner, it doesn't matter if you're fast pace, if you're slow pace. Everyone can run.' Much of the London Marathon training fell during Ramadan when Muslims do not eat or drink between dawn and sunset.
'I've had to be doing quite a lot of my runs fasted so that's been tough to do, knowing that I have to wait a while before I can drink and I can eat,' she said. 'That's what's made it more difficult.' She added: 'I've been telling the children about this in school as well. If you've got something in your head that you want to achieve, you just need to try your hardest. You can do hard things.'
Miss Khalid, who is in her eighth year of teaching at Nelson Primary School, started an after-school running club where children learn the basics of how to run and play games like cat and mouse. 'At the start they could barely run for 30 seconds without being out of breath. It's great to see their progression and how much more confident they are becoming,' she said. She added: 'My class love to race me and love racing each other.
Everything's always a competition. They're always so happy and so cheerful afterwards.' Dylan Wing, 33, a PE teacher at Ricards Lodge High School in Wimbledon, south-west London, hopes the school's running club will play a part in reducing the number of girls who drop out of sport as teenagers. The running club started at the girls school, which welcomes boys in its sixth form, in 2020 when Covid-19 meant only vulnerable students and the children of key workers attended.
'There were very limited things that we were allowed to do at the time and running was obviously one of them,' Mr Wing said. Initially just three students, now it is around 45 with varied training sessions on different evenings and a monthly Parkrun. 'It's a huge, huge confidence booster. They look forward to running every week,' he said. Some students will run in central London on Saturday with parents cheering them on and Mr Wing said: 'Without a doubt I can probably name 10 right now that will do the full marathon one day.'
The teacher, who grew up near Toronto, moved from Canada to the UK in 2015 and joined the school in 2016. He was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and said: 'It has been the major way that I have managed my own ADHD, through physical activity.' He added: 'If I've trained in the morning, it's a big thing to level my head out a little bit which is quite good.' Mr Wing ran the Valencia Marathon in Spain in December and said he knows the crowds in London will help him on Sunday.