Nathan Richmond is 26, from Cloughmills in North Antrim, and in October he will run his first marathon. He'll do it in Dublin, for Action Mental Health, having spent the last couple of years finding his way out of the worst period of his life.
He talks about all of it the way he runs. Steadily, honestly, one kilometre at a time.
Cloughmills, Hurling, and a Job Most People Couldn't Do
Cloughmills sits beside Dunloy, and the two share a parish, so if you know your hurling you know roughly where Nathan is from. He played himself for years, alongside a stint boxing, before life pulled him in other directions.
Work is in a factory. It is heavy, physical, unglamorous work, and he's about to start a new job doing it in Denmark.
He looks after himself now, and he's clear about why. "I had a period where I didn't do that. It's worse for the head. You think you're grand and you're having a great time, but longer term it's worse for the head than keeping yourself straight and normal."
The Runner He Was
Nathan's first competitive road race was a five miler in 2018. He'd never run before in his life. He ran 31 minutes and thought nothing much of it.
"I didn't realise how bizarre that was," he says now. "Thirty-one minutes for five miles, for somebody that had never run."
What followed was a fast couple of years. He was racing local road races most weekends, finishing in the top ten, running 18:31 for 5k and 40:10 for 10k, and weighing in around 65 kilos. He entered the Amsterdam Marathon and was on track for 2:46, hitting every pace and every tempo in the plan.
Two months out, in August, he tore a group of ligaments across the front of his knee. He missed Amsterdam. Then he stopped.
"I said I'm not running any more, and I hadn't run since."
Hurling and boxing carried him for a few more years, until he broke his right leg in 2023 and packed those in too. Then he took off to Australia.
Australia
He was there a year and seven months, and by his own description the lifestyle was a world away from home. Working to live rather than living to work. Sydney beaches. Runs around Centennial Park. Evenings out with friends.
Then a relationship he thought would come home with him fell apart, and things came apart with it.
"My head was up the left. I was thinking all kinds of mad stuff."
There was a night in Sydney when Nathan thought about ending his life. He didn't tell a soul. What stopped him was thinking about his family and the people at home who cared about him, and what it would do to them. He went to the cathedral in the city and lit candles instead. He kept it to himself for roughly ten months before he said any of it out loud.
Coming home didn't fix it. He'd left a life he loved and landed back into one he didn't recognise, finishing work and going home to nothing. The pub filled the gap for a while. He knows now that it made things worse rather than better.
The Memory That Came Up on the Phone
The turn came the way these things often do, on an ordinary day with no warning.
"People talk about epiphanies," he says. "I woke up one day and I was like, Jesus, I can't keep living like this."
Then a memory popped up on his phone. It was that first five mile road race, back in 2018, the one he ran in 31 minutes off no training at all.
"I said, here, I wasn't too bad. I always wanted to run a marathon. I'm going to chase this again. I'm going to do something for myself here, because I've spent all this time worrying about other people."
Dublin was sold out by the time he decided, but he went looking for a way in and found charity places still open. It was mental health awareness month when he was searching, which is how he came across Action Mental Health, and once he'd read up on what they do the decision made itself.
"That's the charity for me. What they're supporting and what they're doing. Their helpline, supporting people that are having problems with their mental health. It meant a lot to be able to do that, because I know what it's like."
"Being Annoyed Is a Luxury"
Nathan is careful about how he talks about all of this, because he's very clear that comparison is the enemy.
"There are people who can't walk. There are people who have just been diagnosed with terminal illnesses. There are people in worse situations on paper. But don't minimise your own problems just because somebody's in a worse position.
His analogy for it is the best thing said in the whole interview. Say you have an unbearable pain in your shoulder. Say there's a man going up the street in a wheelchair who can't walk. Do you decide not to go to the doctor?
"It's the same in your head. If you've got mad thoughts in your head, go and tell somebody about it. Don't keep it to yourself."
He also has a healthy sense of what makes a person worth listening to. "People that are diminishing your situation, you don't need them. The people that are with you and drive you on and support you and pick you up when you fall down, that's the people you talk to."
One of the people who drove him on was Ger Dixon, from Dunloy, the next village over and the same parish. Dixon is a former Antrim hurler who now lives in San Francisco, and in September 2025 he became the first Irishman to run the 421 miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco, covering 30 miles a day for fourteen straight days and raising money for mental health along the way. Nathan reached out to him precisely because of what Dixon had come through himself. "If anybody's going to understand me, he will." That mattered, because the thing that stops most people talking is the fear of the response. "Whenever you speak out, the biggest fear is, ah Jesus, catch yourself on." Dixon didn't say that, and Nathan credits him with a big part in getting him back on the horse.
The biggest surprise for him was how well it went when he finally did open up. It happened at a wedding, in front of close friends from home, and he broke down and told them everything. He'd been convinced they'd think he was losing the plot. They didn't. When he eventually told his parents, their reaction was to ask why he hadn't told them from the start.
"You feel like, I'm the eldest in my family, I need to carry this. You don't have to carry it alone."
He wasn't hugely worried about social media in the middle of all this, but he doesn't think it helped. "If I was in a rut, all I'd do is sit and doom scroll. It's all depressing stuff and that's all that comes up on your feed."
The Block
Nathan came back to running at 84 kilos. He's 75 now.
He started this block with a sub three hour marathon in his head, which given his old times wasn't mad, and he's since let it go entirely.
"As the block went on I was like, you know what, I actually don't give a shit about the time. It's just about getting there. Whether it's three and a half hours or whatever, it doesn't matter."
The week is four runs, sometimes five. Easy on Tuesday, easy Wednesday, intervals on Thursday, an extra easy run on Friday if the legs want it, and the long run on Sunday. He's been running tempos at 3:40 per kilometre, and he ran 1:35 for a half in training with the Derry half marathon coming up and a first 30k long run the Sunday after that.
He is also honest that the block hasn't been clean. He set out with 24 weeks and put his hand up straight away for missing three, four, maybe five of them.
"Certain dates would trigger me. A memory would come up on the phone."
That's where the running earns its keep. Some weeks he gets one run out of four, and on those weeks he goes to the sauna or for a swim instead and lets that do the job.
"I have runs where I'm completely beat, my legs are like two blocks of concrete. It's just putting one foot in front of the other. It's the same as life. It's just about getting from one kilometre to the next kilometre. You've got 42 days of a hard time, and this marathon is 42 kilometres. It doesn't matter how you get there as long as you get there."
No Music, No Gels, No Notions
Ask Nathan for advice for first timers and he gives you two answers that most coaches would argue with, and he has a reason for both.
He doesn't take gels in training. Not on long runs, not on a 21k. That's deliberate.
"I want my body to go, here, I've never had that before. I've never had this flood of carbs before. That's going to spur me on."
And he doesn't run with music. Ever.
"Run without music. Soak up your surroundings. When you hear the noises of the cars driving by, the birds, the leaves rustling, take it all in. You can hear your feet hitting the road. How does it feel? What's your body telling you? Listen to your breathing. How does your heart rate feel?"
"Experience the training. Experience the tempo runs. Take it all in. Do it for you."
Sydney
Dublin isn't the end of it. Nathan has already decided where this finishes.
"I don't plan on stopping in Dublin. My dark days started in Sydney, so I'm going to run the Sydney Marathon. That's my full circle moment."
He wants to do more of this too. More talking, more posting, a podcast eventually, once he has the marathon behind him. His reasoning is the same reasoning that has run through everything else he said.
"It's not talked about enough, and it's always talked about whenever it's too late."
He's not precious about how people come to him, either.
"I don't bite. Just a message or a phone call. I'll tell you the things I've done that made me feel better. There is always light at the end of the tunnel. You start going through a tunnel on the motorway, and you come out of it eventually. It doesn't go on forever."
You can support Nathan's fundraising for Action Mental Health ahead of the Dublin Marathon here.
You can also follow his journey on Facebook and Instagram.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, Action Mental Health have locations all across Northern Ireland and can be contacted here. Samaritans also provides free, confidential support 24 hours a day on 116 123, across both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
