When her 84-year-old father took his own life in July 2018, Belinda Bryant's family was devastated.

Geoffrey Hampton was a big personality at Newtown Cricket Club and his death left everyone who knew him heartbroken.

Belinda said: "In the last seven months we have learnt of other families that have had to go through a suicide in the family, it doesn’t just affect the person that has died but all those around them, it has a terrible knock-on effect of others needing help."

To give back to the community that supported the family through their grief such as the Ponthafren Association and Fiona Buckley at Newtown High School, Belinda contacted mental health charity Mind and was offered a place for this year's Virgin Money London Marathon.

Belinda is no stranger to the gruelling 26-mile run after taking part five years in 2015 for the Stroke Association as her dad, father-in-law and uncle had suffered from the serious life-threatening medical condition.

However the coronavirus outbreak was forced more than 45,000 participants to complete in the first-ever virtual marathon on Sunday, October 4, after it was pushed back from April as the country went into lockdown.

"As you can imagine with all the one and off decisions and the outcome of a virtual, my husband Steve could run with me too," Belinda said. "Our plan was still to travel to family in London and run around the parks in west London, but due to our daughter having a Covid test on Friday afternoon it was all up in the air whether we could even leave the house to run it at all.

"Thankfully a negative result coming through at 11.30pm on the Saturday night, we formed a plan to stay close to home and did the Newtown Parkrun Loop being just over two miles long."

Belinda and Steve braved the rain and ran 13 laps around from Trehafren Fields.

Belinda said: "We had a fabulous day with lots of running buddies coming to run with us and some cheering us on, even strangers once they saw our London Marathon race numbers.

"I felt overwhelmed with all the love and support giving to us specially by those who knew my dad.

"I would like to thank them all, friends, family and the Newtown people, young and old, who thought we were nuts going up and down the river path, to the dog owners who had very well behaved dogs and not one tripped us over!"

If you would like to donate to Mind, so we can help those that have had tough time specially through this very tough year, you can do so.. https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BelindaBryant1