Mark Doris: Running ultra marathons in memory of his son
Since Marco was stillborn more than ten years ago, Mark has raised more than £27,000 for baby loss charity, Sands
Some journeys never really end. Some solo runners are never truly on their own.
That’s the case for Mark Doris, who runs every step he takes in memory of his son, Marco.
For the last 10 years, Mark has been running for baby loss charity Sands, after Marco was tragically stillborn.
In that time, he has raised more than £27,000 including more than £2,000 while completing this year’s London Marathon in a 40 minute personal best time.
The Scotsman’s time of three hours, 42 minutes and 51 seconds came despite suffering a hamstring injury after around 20 miles,
But that marathon achievement was nothing compared to the epic adventure he undertook to complete last year’s 96-mile West Highland Way ultra marathon.
It was a race three years, two attempts, and one knee operation in the making. When Mark finally completed it in 34 hours and 29 minutes, raising more than £10,000 for Sands in the process, it was a phenomenal tribute to both his resilience and to the power of running for a cause.
‘Why I run for Sands’:
It was back in 2015 when Marco, the first of Mark’s five sons, was stillborn. He quickly came into contact with Sands, a charity he hadn’t even heard of previously.
Formed in 1978 by a group of bereaved parents, Sands provides support to bereaved families and has developed vital research to improve maternity care and prevent avoidable baby deaths.
For Mark, the charity provided the simplest, but most touching, of memorials for Marco.
“The most amazing thing is a memory box, which you get in the hospital, and that gives you matching blankets - one to go in the coffin, one to take home - matching teddy bears, they take photographs, they take handprints, etc,” he said.
“All the sort of precious stuff that any parent would gather over a period of time. But unfortunately, our time with Marco was very short.”
The memory box costs around £25 to put together, allowing Sands to help thousands of parents using the money raised by Mark and others.
But that gesture only scrapes the surface of the work the charity does, with research and prevention being coupled with counselling services.
Mark told Running Tales: “What happened is something that you never really expect, but unfortunately it’s more common than we would probably all care to believe and understand.
“Once we came to terms with things, I realised I wanted to honour his memory, and hopefully try to help other parents out there.
“It’s about trying to get that message out to people, so even if I don’t raise as much money during an event, if I can get the word out and keep signs at the forefront of people’s mind, keep people talking about my son, then that makes me a happy father.”
The first race Mark took on was a London-based 10k obstacle course, an event that proved particularly challenging as he was recovering from a ruptured cruciate ligament which had stopped him running and playing football.
Despite the injury, he completed and enjoyed the race. But it soon became clear that if he was going to keep raising money for Sands then 10km events weren’t going to cut it.
“Donor fatigue is ultimately something all fundraisers will experience,” he said. “If you keep running 10k races, people will just roll their eyes.
“They’ll end up asking, ‘what’s he doing? why is he doing the same thing again?”
Mark quickly decided the only answer was to keep making his events bigger and better. A challenge to run as many laps of Tough Mudder as possible followed, and then a marathon’s worth of obstacle course laps.
It was at that point that the West Highland Way came onto his radar.
From a reconstructed ACL to the Sterling Marathon:
Running became not only a way of fundraising for Sands but also a “mental release” from stress and grief.
Mark had been a sprinter in his younger days, but when his cruciate ligament injury had led to his ACL having to be reconstructed, he had prematurely decided he was “past it”.
“But once we’d lost Marco, I felt as if fresh air and exercise helped me,” he said. “Getting back into running was really difficult - before I did that first obstacle course race, I went out for a bit of a shakeout run, and my knee flared up about a mile into it.
“I walked into the house and I was in tears. I said to my wife that I wasn’t going to be able to do the race.
“Ultimately, I pushed through that pain barrier, and I think that’s now my superpower when it comes to events. I can sit in that pain cave, and I can keep going when I probably shouldn’t.”
As he took on more and more events, Mark’s running steadily picked up again. Although he says sprinting and getting really fast times is never likely to be his thing again, the distances he took on started to increase.
He even ran the Sterling Marathon as part of his training regime for the Tough Mudder laps challenge he was to complete.
“That was the type of thing where I was trying to drum up sponsorship, letting people know that I was doing a training race - and it was a marathon,” he said.
“On the day, I was hurting, and it didn’t go smoothly, but I tried to put on a brave face and let people know that this was going on. It was about keeping on pushing my body and saying, ‘what am I capable of?’
“I do like testing myself, and I’ve still got that bit of a thought in the back of my head, saying, what can I do? And if I can’t go faster, can I go further?
“That has been my motto over the last number of years.”
As well as his own ability to push through the pain barrier, Mark had the strongest of reasons to keep running when things got tough.
Running for Marco and Sands give him a powerful why to “dig deep,” one that often leads to an emotional release at the end of events.
He said: “At most of my races, and still to this day, I’ll cross the finishing line, and feel exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed, as everybody does when they’ve achieved something big.
“But with that reason behind it, I tend to have a bit of a wobble, but that’s okay.
“My other kids get to come and see me towards the finishing line, although at the Sterling Marathon, my wife decided to hand over my second-born, Tino, to me, thinking that the finishing line was just up ahead, but it was up ahead and round the corner a bit.
“He was 11 months old, so he wasn’t exactly light!”
The West Highland Way Race - Ballots, injury and being saved by a storm:
After completing a major race or challenge, many people’s immediate reaction is something along the lines of ‘I’m never doing anything like that again’.
But for Mark, the idea of taking on the West Highland Way came on the evening after he’d finished his attempt to run as many laps of Tough Mudder as possible.
He said: “My uncle’s a big advocate of identifying what my next challenge is.
“The West Highland Way came up in conversation, it was a bit tongue-in-cheek.
“Ninety-six miles is a lot to do. But I just had this burning sensation in the back of my head, and I thought, ‘yeah, I’m going to try this’.”
The West Highland Way Race not only covers those 96 miles but also takes in 14,000 feet in elevation. Famed as one of the world’s longest established ultra-marathons, it was first ran in 1985 and takes place between Milngavie - just north of Glasgow - and Fort William in the Scottish Highlands.
It is also a balloted race which requires entrants to have ultra marathon experience - something Mark didn’t have.
“I decided that wasn’t going to stop me,” he said. “So, I decided to run it myself outside of the official race.”
Despite training hard, Mark’s first attempt would be thwarted by a rolled ankle. After heading off from Fort William at midnight, he managed to successfully run solo through the night, but it was at Loch Lomond where things went wrong.
“I’d met my friend and his fiancee, and I rolled my ankle,” he said. “But there was no way I could even get to a car so I had to get through to my next checkpoint.
“The next checkpoint for me was at 71 miles, at Rowardennan. I had to hobble three or four miles on a sprained ankle.
“When I got there, I wanted to continue, but I just didn’t have another marathon in me, and that was it.”
By then, Mark had been running for around 23-and-a-half hours, the furthest he had ever run been on his feet. But it “broke my heart” when he had to stop.
“I was a broken man,” he told Running Tales. I felt as if I’d let down a lot of people, because I’d raised quite a lot that year, and there were a lot of expectations.”
Although it was his ankle that had forced him to stop, Mark had more serious injury worries to deal with.
He’d already been on the waiting list for knee surgery due to a torn meniscus, and although it wasn’t affecting his running, he could no longer put off the operation.
It meant any immediate return to the West Highlands wasn’t possible, but on the plus side Mark was able to start planning some shorter ultra marathons for 2024.
When those were successfully ticked off, he returned to the West Highland Way - and now, he could enter the official race ballot.
Lo and behold, he hit the ballot lottery at the first time of asking, propelling him into another round of training and preparation.
“I was quietly confident,” Mark said. “My training block went really, really well.
“I had more race experience and knew what to expect.”
Despite that new found confidence, Mark still felt nervous as the 1am race start approached.
Having had little sleep in the run up to it, he also had hot conditions to deal with during the run. The early morning start saw temperatures sitting at 18°C (64°F), while they peaked at 31°C (88°F) during the day.
At one point, Mark even worried he had heat stroke: “I was 30-odd miles in, and I was feeling tired, my joints were aching, I didn’t feel like eating.
“I couldn’t really pinpoint that. I’d done training runs longer than that and my pacing had been on point up to then, but I’d suddenly fallen off the wagon.”
Incredibly, Mark would later find out that he’d contracted Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness that can cause fever, headaches, tiredness and even joint paint, severe headaches and heart palpitations.
“It was affecting me from a fatigue point of view, and with joint and muscle soreness,” Mark said.
“It was the most surreal experience. There’s a 35-hour cut-off for the West Highland Way Race and for the final eight hours, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it.”
Mark’s way of coping consisted of “a lot of arguments with the sky along the way” and the invaluable help of his fellow competitors.
“The ultra running community is a different breed,” he said.
“Everybody you talk to along the way, the people you bump into, people overtaking you, they are all checking you’re okay.
“That really helps. You’ve got a lot of people going through their own personal trials and tribulations, but you’re still able to grab onto their coattails to drag you along a wee bit when you feel like walking.
“I’ve got a habit of having a bag of gummy bears in my bag. And if I’m on a go slow, I’ll run along, and I’ll hold it out as soon as I hear somebody’s feet approaching.
“They’ll grab a couple of gummy bears, you’ll talk to them, and then hopefully try to keep running with them.”
Mark was also boosted by running support from his sister and best friend, who joined him after around 60 miles.
The hardest part came when he started running through the night for the second time, an experience he calls “a power march into the dark”.
“I was saying to my best friend, Ryan, that I needed to sit down, to shut my eyes for two minutes,” Mark said.
“He said I couldn’t [due to the cut-offs], but it got to a point where I was power walking - well, I was probably crawling, to be honest, but I felt as if I was power walking - and he just had me by the shoulder, and was guiding me.
“My eyes were shutting, I was dead on my feet.”
As if that wasn’t enough it was then that the course was hit by a thunderstorm, which Mark describes as starting with a “roar” of thunder before “the sky just erupted, and there was rain bouncing off the ground.
“I think that maybe saved me, because it refreshed me, it woke me up.”
Despite that storm-induced recovery, Mark was still tempted to drop out of the event when he reached the next checkpoint.
But a reassuring volunteer told him he had plenty of time to make the remaining cut-offs, so he rolled up his metaphorical sleeves and returned to the power walking plan.
With around 13 miles to go, Mark still had plenty of work to do but as long as he felt those cut-offs were realistic he was determined to continue.
“I wasn’t going to just throw in the towel,” he said, “but I think we all do this when we’re running - you get your runner’s math going on, and you’re either massively underestimating or massively overestimating how you’re doing.
“I was thinking I had two-and-a-half hours to do 13 miles over rough terrain, but I had five hours. My brain just wasn’t working by that point.”
Finish line moments in memory of Marco:
The finish line is an incredible place on ultra marathons.
Often broken athletes - Mark was running 22-minute miles by the end of the West Highland Way Race - drag themselves towards the last steps of what for many is their greatest achievement.
“That run had been on the horizon for a while, and I really wanted to do it,” Mark told Running Tales.
“I felt as if I’d let myself down on that first attempt, let other people down, but also I’d let Marco down, and that was a tough pill to swallow.
“So, knowing that I’d managed to finish it, and my wife and my kids were there to support me at the finishing line [was incredible].
“I know everybody will say this, and I’m probably looking at it through rose-tinted glasses, but the finishing line at the West Highland Way is the most amazing experience ever.
“They have the prize-giving at the end of the race at the cut-off time. So, when I came into the hall, every runner, their families and their supporters were there, and the cheer and everything was the most amazing experience.
“It was just pure relief to be able to know that I’d got there, a wonderful, wonderful feeling.”
Mark’s finish line moments, at the West Highland Way Race, London Marathon and elsewhere, are only topped by his unquenchable desire to keep Marco’s memory alive and to raise funds in his memory.
“It has given me focus,” he said. “You can feel quite lost, and to have a focus that revolves around my son has been vital.
“You can keep yourself busy with a million and one different things, but to have something that’s focused around Marco and his memory, that’s been great.”
As well as running races himself, Mark held a 5k run in honour of Marco last year. It is something he hopes will become an annual event and a chance for bereaved parents to come together - and perhaps help them complete their own running challenge.
“Running’s a real good release,” he said. “You never feel bad after a run. You might feel sore, but you never feel bad.
“It’s a good way to clear your head and be alone with your own thoughts.”
Alone with your thoughts, but perhaps - if you have a strong enough reason - never entirely alone.
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