London2Brighton Challenge: Worthing man’s ultra challenge for Mind follows traumatic brain injury

Bhood La rouge, 36, describes himself as an extreme character but it was just a simple accident that left him in a coma for eight days with swelling on two-thirds of his brain.

He was living in New Zealand at the time and it took months of recovery before he was even allowed to run. Now, he is planning to do 100km in one hit at the London2Brighton Challenge on May 28.

Bhood said: “Not everyone’s challenges are the same but we can all help each other. One of the main reasons for doing this is just to inspire others. Sometimes you have to do the more challenging things in life. It helps you grow as a person.

“If I can have the accident I’ve had and do this, and come out the other side, it might inspire people who have never done a challenge before. You can just chip away at it, you don’t have to go to an extreme. I want to inspire people to take small steps to go for gold.”

Bhood’s good friend Brett Lamper said his road to recovery from the accident six years ago had been inspirational.

Bhood explained: “I climbed over a wall, slipped on some mud and hit my head on concrete. I spent eight days in a coma and I was in hospital for four or five weeks.

“In a strange way it was calming, everything had been wiped from my memory, you just feel like you are floating.

“I was putting random words into sentences without noticing and they had to teach me to go up and down stairs but I could walk after resting up.

“Before, I was doing half marathons. When they put me on an exercise bike, I was burned out after a couple of minutes. But after four or five months, they let me run again.

“I was sent on an unbelievable journey for eight months in recovery, learning how to talk and walk properly again, but the hardest thing was getting my personality back.

“I’ll never be 100 per cent. I have to babysit myself a bit more. Sometimes I struggle in conversation because my brain can’t compute what is happening as quickly as it normally should.

“You figure it out, you try different ways of eating and sleeping, and exercise helps. The first two years after the accident, I was discovering what works for me.”

The 100km will be an epic challenge and this is Bhood’s third attempt at it, having been halted by injury and varicose veins in the past, but his training is going well.

He said: “I am running for Mind because there are people that need our support. It was a massive challenge for me to be sociable with people, understand my surroundings, recognise places and remember faces of friends. It has given me an epic wake up call to those who are around us that suffer with mental health.

“I went through so many mental struggles, and still do, so much of my journey I had to do on my own. But because of the charity Mind there are thousands of people that don’t have to be on their own in their journey.”

Visit www.justgiving.com/fundraising/bhood-la-rouge1 for more information and to make a donation.

Also in the news: South Coast & Sussex Bird & Gull Rescue Network warns of crisis ahead and puts out urgent calls for volunteers in the Worthing area

See also: See how Worthing celebrated the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953

For the latest breaking news where you live in Sussex, follow us on Twitter @Sussex_World and like us on Facebook @SussexWorldUK