‘I was 23 when I suffered sudden cardiac arrest during a half marathon and a fellow runner saved my life with CPR’

A 23-year-old Yorkshire man has completed his first half marathon since suffering a sudden cardiac arrest during his last attempt in 2025 where a fellow runner had to perform CPR on him.

Joshua Breene, a Master’s student at the University of Bath who is from Hull, said he “never had any warning signs” of heart problems before he collapsed less than a kilometre from the finish line of the Birmingham Half Marathon in May 2025, resulting in “smashed” front teeth and being unconscious for five minutes.

Fellow runner, Lloyd Heckler, 31, who works as a physiotherapist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, did CPR until paramedics arrived and rushed Joshua to the same hospital.

Joshua said he was diagnosed with an atrial flutter on Tuesday May 6, which is an abnormal heart rhythm that causes the upper chambers of the heart to beat too quickly, according to the British Heart Foundation.

He had surgery to correct the problem and stayed in hospital for a total of six days. Within that time, Joshua said Lloyd connected with him on the running app Strava and messaged to see how he was getting on, then came to visit him in hospital the day after he was admitted.

Joshua told PA Real Life: “The first 20 kilometres all went really well. I was happy with the pace I was going and I was really enjoying it.

“And then I just suddenly became the most lightheaded I’ve ever been and I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t have chest pain or anything like that.

“By the time I realised something wasn’t right and that I should probably stop running, that was the last thing I remember before I blacked out,” he added.

Looking back on the lead-up to the Birmingham Half Marathon in May 2025, Joshua said he did “plenty of runs” with his friends, as well as his sister, Natasha Breene, and her partner, Sam Felipes, and “never had any signs of struggles on those”.

On the morning of the run on Sunday May 4, Joshua said he was feeling “pretty psyched” to get under way so he briefly said hello to Natasha and Sam – who were beginning in a wave after him – before he made his way to the starting line.

Joshua said he was “feeling good” throughout the race and he was energised by the crowd, until a feeling of lightheadedness came on about 10 seconds before his sudden cardiac arrest.

At this point, Lloyd said he had already finished the race and was “going back out onto the course” to support his girlfriend when his partner’s dad called out to him to help with a medical emergency.

Lloyd told PA Real Life: “It was a very daunting experience and all happened very quickly. I could see that Josh had collapsed on the floor and someone had already started CPR on him.

“He was completely unconscious and I couldn’t really work out what his age was because he’d fallen onto his face and smashed up a load of his teeth, and he was covered in blood,” he added.

Lloyd said he cut open Joshua’s top, then shared CPR duties with someone already on the scene before Joshua finally came around, five minutes after he’d collapsed, saying: “Have I finished the race?”

Joshua remembered: “I had an oxygen mask on and I noticed all the paramedics around me. I had no idea it was anything to do with my heart and I didn’t really feel any pain.

“Initially, I assumed I fainted so I tried to get back up and the paramedics said, ‘You are not going anywhere’.

“I also knew I’d cut my face because I could feel my front teeth smashed and one was hanging out,” he added.

Joshua said he was transported into a medical tent and then into the back of an ambulance, where he first overheard a paramedic mention his heart was beating irregularly.

Once admitted to hospital, Joshua said he had several more checks on his heart – including an echocardiogram – which is when he was told on Tuesday May 6 that he had experienced an atrial flutter.

“I was shocked and a bit scared,” Joshua said.

Lloyd said he wondered what had happened to Joshua, so he looked up his first name on the Birmingham Half Marathon website after he remembered seeing it on Joshua’s running bib, then he cross-referenced it with people who didn’t finish the race.

After finding out his last name, Lloyd said he came across Joshua’s profile on the running app, Strava, where the Master’s student had posted a photo of himself from a hospital bed while explaining that he had woken up to strangers giving him CPR.

Lloyd said: “I messaged him on Strava saying I was one of those strangers and said I assumed he’d probably gone to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which is where I work.

“I was happy to come and see him to fill in the blanks because I’m sure he wouldn’t have remembered anything.

“The next day, I went and found him in the cardiac unit and I’m sure, for him, it was probably quite weird, but we had a little bit of a chat.

“I was just glad he was alright,” Lloyd added.

By late Thursday afternoon, Joshua had surgery: “I wasn’t put under general anesthetic so I was in and out of consciousness.

“It was nerve-wracking knowing someone’s going to be messing around with your heart, but doctors did a good job of keeping me calm,” he added.

After the two-hour surgery, Joshua said he felt “a little bit of pain” but he was told it all went well.

Joshua was discharged from hospital on Friday May 9 and for the first month after his cardiac arrest said he couldn’t “do anything” that would raise his heartbeat. After three months, Joshua said he could do “very light exercise” and he was able to get root canals to fix his teeth, too.

Joshua said he had various fitness tests, heart scans, and MRIs that made doctors confident the problem was “fixed” by the surgery, so at his six-month update he asked his consultant if he could start “doing a little bit of running” to potentially take on the Bath Half Marathon in March 2026.

“He was a little bit shocked that I wanted to get back to doing what caused my cardiac arrest so soon,” Joshua said. “But he said it was up to me, advising me to build it up slowly and if I felt any chest pains or lightheadedness, I needed to get it checked out.”

Joshua said he was “very careful and nervous” in early runs – stopping whenever he got a stitch or felt discomfort – but he built his confidence up over time. He felt it made “a lot of sense” to do the Bath Half Marathon on Sunday March 14 to raise money for the British Heart Foundation.

In the lead-up to the race, Lloyd said he was “most impressed” when he noticed via Strava that Joshua had come back to Birmingham to run “the last kilometre of the course that he didn’t get to do”, so Lloyd wished him well for his upcoming run.

On the day of the Bath Half, Joshua said: “As I got to the start line, I definitely felt some nerves from the memories of what happened last time, but once I got running and settled in… it went really well.

“It was a much nicer run than how it ended last time,” he added.

Lloyd said: “I was actually over the moon for him that he’d completed it. I think it’s quite incredible really.

“Everyone should learn CPR. It’s a life-saving skill, it’s easy to learn, and you just never know when you might need to do it,” he added.

The BHF wants as many people to learn CPR as possible. You can learn for free in just 15 minutes with BHF’s online RevivR tool: https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/how-to-do-cpr/learn-cpr-in-15-minutes