We are the GNR: Jenny and Vanessa Herbert

Every September tens of thousands of runners line up on the start line of the Great North Run, they run for those they love and those they have lost – their names on their backs to push them forward.

For Jenny and Vanessa Herbert, sisters from Reading, Berkshire, they’ll will be taking on the 2025 AJ Bell Great North Run with 60,000 others – but their reason for running, couldn’t be more personal.

Just days after receiving a text from their older brother Mark, asking them to join him in the race, the unimaginable happened. Mark, aged just 49, died suddenly from a heart attack, caused by undiagnosed coronary heart disease. A keen runner and former club-level athlete, Mark (pictured with Vanessa and Jenny below) had already signed up to the 13.1-mile event and was hoping his sisters would join him on the iconic route from Newcastle to South Shields.

“We just knew we had to do this for Mark,” says Jenny, 39, a psychotherapist based in Newbury. “He wanted us to do it together. We can’t do it with him, but we can do it for him.”

Both sisters had taken part in 10k runs with Mark in the past, and they knew there was only one way to honour his wish: to finish what he started, and to raise funds for the British Heart Foundation along the way.

Mark had completed the Great North Run before and loved the atmosphere. A scaffolder by trade and “strong as an ox,” he was, in the eyes of his family, “superhuman.” In his youth, he represented Berkshire in athletics and later completed the London Marathon in 3 hours 40 minute but like so many others, he had no idea he was living with coronary heart disease.

That’s why Jenny and Vanessa are determined to raise money for the British Heart Foundation, whose lifesaving research helps to uncover and treat hidden heart conditions.

“He loved life and would throw himself into things. He’d done the Great North Run before and was determined to do it again, as it’s one of the great half marathons and he loved the fantastic atmosphere along the route.”

Their older brother Paul will be there on the day to support them at the finish line.

“It’ll be emotional,” Jenny says. “But it’ll also be a day full of pride — knowing we’re doing this for a truly worthy cause and helping others who might be living with Mark’s condition.”

The sisters will join 1,000 fellow BHF runners on Sunday 7 September, lining up in a sea of red to represent the charity that continues to fund revolutionary treatment and world-class research.

The Great North Run is more than a race. It’s a movement of people with passion and purpose. They stand on the start line alone but run together, united by this great event.

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