Founded to promote the benefits of exercise on your body + mind, the MHAC aims to create a community to raise both awareness + funds for MH charities..
Alice Denham-Smith
Founder & The Boss
Tommy Leete
Founder & Former Olympic Procrastinator
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Mental Health Awareness Club
MHAC x TCCOACHING SOCIAL RUN CLUB
Our Social Run Club is for everyone, just turn up, run with us and maybe grab a coffee after! The sole objective is to get people together and moving to help promote physical + mental well-being.
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Please check out our instagram page for all Social Run Club events + updates.
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To mark our collaboration with TCCOACHING we have launched our first Social Run Club tee.
Available now to buy now via https://www.tccoaching.uk/thepackages/p/socialrunclub
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The MHAC Story
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The MHAC Story
Recently Alice & I were asked to put into words our story and how the MHAC came to be.
We put our heads together and managed to put something down that we were both happy with. Something that simply summed up who we are and what we do.
We were then asked if we we’d happy to share the story behind what sparked it, the origin story…
This is something I’m now more open about and happy to share. Before I wasn’t because I felt ashamed and maybe worried how others would see me. An example of this is where we’ve been asked on numerous occasions to appear on various podcasts and I’ve pulled out because I felt uncomfortable with it all.
As it’s mental health awareness month I felt it only right to share more.
I met Alice (ADS) through my love of coffee and trips to The Yard in Chilton Candover. We quickly became friends and when I had the idea of putting out a tee to promote all things mental health Alice DM’d me asking if there was anything she could do to help. Together we bought more tees, set up an Instagram page, put on an amazing yoga session on the farm and had all these ideas of how to do more and help others.
Sadly I maybe wasn’t in the best frame of mind during this time and secretly struggled with depression. Turns out I’m amazing at hiding it!!
Apart of me was happy to be the one to put his hand up and say I struggle but then I’d also want to run away from everything associated with it.
During this time I had several low spells but one in particular late last year which almost resulted in me doing something selfish and I pretty much hit my rock bottom. I lost all my confidence and didn’t know what to do. It was such a horrible time that I’d not wish on anyone.
I hope Alice won’t mind me sharing but she sent me a pretty hard message during this moment saying I had to do something. Go seek professional help and take the necessary steps to get back my life back on track. So I did.
I was very fortunate to have someone reach out to me who wanted to help and so I began the process of therapy. Let’s call this person Jamie, because that’s his name!! We’d meet every Wednesday, usually around midday and it soon became something I looked forward to. It was the part of the week I wanted to get to. At first I didn’t know what I was doing but was open to anything as I wanted to get better.
Slowly but surely Jamie rebuilt my confidence and gave me tools to help change my life for the better. I’ll always hold Jamie on such high regard as he reset me and I’m now the person I want to be. Well, I’m pretty close to that person I feel.
Back end of last year I told Alice I wanted to give the MHAC another go. I felt so strongly about this and long story short, this is where we are to date. We’re growing slowly and steadily but doing things that are so important to us. We are passionate about helping others and building a community. I think I finally found my purpose in life.
I feel confident in saying most people reading this who know us will have met a new friend in the past few months off the Social Run Clubs we host alongside Tom from @tccoaching__ . I know I certainly have! I’ve met so many amazing people, way too many to mention but you know who you are.
The highlight to date for me was working with @michaeldoughty_ + his amazing team at @hyloathletics. I can’t thank Michael enough for collaborating with us to bring people together to run around London in early April. This will be explained more later this month but what an experience it was.
We want to work with amazing people and have so many exciting things to share soon with you all.
I’m wary I’ve written this off the cuff and so it’ll be littered with spelling mistakes and incredibly poor grammar but that’s me! I’m not perfect!
BIG LOVE
Tommy x
Recently Alice & I were asked to put into words our story and how the MHAC came to be.
We put our heads together and managed to put something down that we were both happy with. Something that simply summed up who we are and what we do.
​
We were then asked if we we’d happy to share the story behind what sparked it, the origin story…
This is something I’m now more open about and happy to share. Before I wasn’t because I felt ashamed and maybe worried how others would see me. An example of this is where we’ve been asked on numerous occasions to appear on various podcasts and I’ve pulled out because I felt uncomfortable with it all.
As it’s mental health awareness month I felt it only right to share more.
I met Alice (ADS) through my love of coffee and trips to The Yard in Chilton Candover. We quickly became friends and when I had the idea of putting out a tee to promote all things mental health Alice DM’d me asking if there was anything she could do to help. Together we bought more tees, set up an Instagram page, put on an amazing yoga session on the farm and had all these ideas of how to do more and help others.
Sadly I maybe wasn’t in the best frame of mind during this time and secretly struggled with depression. Turns out I’m amazing at hiding it!!
Apart of me was happy to be the one to put his hand up and say I struggle but then I’d also want to run away from everything associated with it.
During this time I had several low spells but one in particular late last year which almost resulted in me doing something selfish and I pretty much hit my rock bottom. I lost all my confidence and didn’t know what to do. It was such a horrible time that I’d not wish on anyone.
I hope Alice won’t mind me sharing but she sent me a pretty hard message during this moment saying I had to do something. Go seek professional help and take the necessary steps to get back my life back on track. So I did.
I was very fortunate to have someone reach out to me who wanted to help and so I began the process of therapy. Let’s call this person Jamie, because that’s his name!! We’d meet every Wednesday, usually around midday and it soon became something I looked forward to. It was the part of the week I wanted to get to. At first I didn’t know what I was doing but was open to anything as I wanted to get better.
Slowly but surely Jamie rebuilt my confidence and gave me tools to help change my life for the better. I’ll always hold Jamie on such high regard as he reset me and I’m now the person I want to be. Well, I’m pretty close to that person I feel.
Back end of last year I told Alice I wanted to give the MHAC another go. I felt so strongly about this and long story short, this is where we are to date. We’re growing slowly and steadily but doing things that are so important to us. We are passionate about helping others and building a community. I think I finally found my purpose in life.
I feel confident in saying most people reading this who know us will have met a new friend in the past few months off the Social Run Clubs we host alongside Tom from @tccoaching__ . I know I certainly have! I’ve met so many amazing people, way too many to mention but you know who you are.
The highlight to date for me was working with @michaeldoughty_ + his amazing team at @hyloathletics. I can’t thank Michael enough for collaborating with us to bring people together to run around London in early April. This will be explained more later this month but what an experience it was.
We want to work with amazing people and have so many exciting things to share soon with you all.
I’m wary I’ve written this off the cuff and so it’ll be littered with spelling mistakes and incredibly poor grammar but that’s me! I’m not perfect!
BIG LOVE
Tommy x