‘I ran London Marathon with a nearly 25kg ‘bag of worries’ – now I help runners share the weight of their struggles’

A dad of two is on a mission to create the biggest mental health conversation within the running community as he carries a 24.7kg bag – representing the weight of life’s worries that we carry 24 hours a day, seven days a week – on his back around London’s run clubs and races.

43-year-old Andrew Baines Vosper got the inspiration to start his social media page ‘Share the Weight’ after securing a place to run the London Marathon in 2024 with the charity Samaritans, after volunteering with them for nine years.

“I wanted to do something difficult for the race,” Andrew, who lives just outside London in Gravesend, told PA Real Life.

“I decided to run with what I call my ‘bag of worries’ and this was to represent the weight of life that all of us carry on our shoulders.

“I heard a saying that suicide is the final collapse under an unbearable weight, and that’s what my bag represents.”

Andrew explained that he had no plans to keep on running with the weight after the marathon, until he spoke to a security guard on the day of the race.

“He (the security guard) was standing there as I walked into the marathon gates and he gave me that look. So I told him a bit about my own story, why I was running for Samaritans and what I’ve been through with my own mental health,” Andrew said.

“He asked to put it on his shoulders to see how heavy it was and when he did that, he started talking and opening up. He told me what he had been going through and the emotional place he was in.”

Andrew said that although he was used to hearing a lot of stories due to his work with the Samaritans, this particularly story resonated with him.

“It was me and this bloke – both of us sort of similar size, bald, tattoos, standing in a field of thousands of people having this chat. It just felt like an everyday conversation, and that’s what this should be. We should be able to talk to each other about all of these things without that fear of judgment and stigma,” Andrew said.

A couple of months later, in July 2024, Share the Weight was born by Andrew going out and asking strangers to help share his bag of worries.

Andrew explained that the idea involves him going to run clubs, races and marathons and trying to share the weight of his worries, with the hope other people will also share the weight of theirs.

“When I started off, I said, ‘I’m going to share the weight of my worries with a million people’, and so far I have had nearly 2,000 people help share the weight,” he said.

Andrew, who said he was in a bad place when he was younger, said that this is his reason for helping others.

“In my younger years I struggled with a drug addiction which had a massive impact on my life and people around me,” he said.

“Thankfully, I got support – because if not things may have been very different.”

“Then I went through infertility and I found out that I wasn’t able to have children biologically, and as a man that’s a big weight to carry on your shoulders. I went through things like depression, and I had a breakdown at one point. I got to a place where I didn’t want to be here anymore.

“I told my therapist that it wasn’t necessarily that I wanted to die, but I didn’t feel like I wanted to be here anymore – or, more importantly, I didn’t think I had the strength to keep going.

“This is why the bag resonates with me so much. I had got to a point where I had been carrying (my depression) for so long, I didn’t realise how heavy it got, and it kind of felt like normal. But I didn’t have the energy or strength in me to keep carrying it.”

When it comes to his own mental wellbeing now, Andrew said he takes care of it firstly through exercise. “I don’t necessarily like running, but I like the feeling afterwards,” he said. “I need those endorphins.”

He also aims for human connection and talking to people so he knows he isn’t alone, even when he is having a bad day. He said he still takes antidepressants and although he still gets bad days or weeks, he can recognise it now and try to do something about it.

When it comes to the practicalities of running with the 24.7kg bag, Andrew described it as being “horrible”.

“I’ve done it with two marathons now so I can compare and contrast,” he explained.

“The first one was when Share the Weight didn’t exist, and it was horrible. The second one, it existed, and the back of my T-shirt said: ‘I might look strong, but I’m struggling. Can you help share the weight?’

“The amount of people that stepped in to help was incredible. It’s like life that way.

“To me, it’s exactly like carrying the emotional weight of life, it’s no different. It slows me down. I’m always in the back because I can’t keep up with everybody else. It weighs me down. It hurts. The longer I carry it, the worse it gets. It’s exactly the same as how it feels when you’re carrying life on your shoulders.”

When he gets to run clubs and park runs, Andrew said he never knows what the reaction will be. “I went to a park run this weekend, for example, and one guy helped share the weight at the start and then we ran the full 5k together. I have found that run clubs have been phenomenally supportive and I’ve now been getting so many offers to come and run at run clubs, and share the weight and talk. It’s incredible.”

Andrew said he never takes it for granted when someone opens up to him and he feels his impact.

“There have been a few times, even lately, where I get really emotional when I hear things,” he said, adding that a recent conversation with a man in the park about his personal struggles left him with “tears streaming” down his face.

Andrew said he finds it hard to put his mission into words, “but I want as many people to know that asking for help doesn’t make you weak”.

He added: “I never had a plan for this, but I want to create the biggest mental health conversation within the running community and beyond.”

To find out more about Share The Weight, visit here.