21.1km per day for 21 days straight for TBI awareness

South Australian Nick Dowling is in the midst of a running challenge all in the name of raising awareness of traumatic brain injury (TBI).

The former tradie turned university student is running 21 half marathons over 21 days to help raise much needed funds to educate the community on all forms of TBI including concussion.

The reason for raising money for concussion awareness? Well, Dowling himself has suffered three. The first, was an accident while playing in the garden with his brother as a child. The most recent however, was the one with the biggest impact.

While playing AFL for his local club in Adelaide, Nick went for a tackle and ended up going down, suffering whiplash and knocking his head back against the ground.

He was knocked out for a few seconds, with his symptoms then increasing – dizziness, initially being unable to speak, followed with then repeating what he was saying. Nick was dazed, hallucinating seeing people in the crowd who were not there and suffered memory loss of the week prior to his concussion injury.

Now studying primary school teaching, Nick has hung up his footy boots – putting his brain health first.

In doing so he discovered a love of endurance running which led him to come up with the idea of running 21.1kms a day for 21 days. A challenge big enough to capture the attention of the community and in doing so raising awareness of concussion as a traumatic brain injury.

You can support Nick on his legendary challenge here: www.gofundme.com/f/211k-per-day-for-21-days-straight-for-tbi-awareness

Follow Nick’s Instagram here to see how he is managing each day: www.instagram.com/nick_dowling/