Run victim's family raising money

Kieran Patching left behind a wife and two children

The family of a man who collapsed and died during last year's Great North Run are trying to raise money for more research into sudden death syndrome.

Their fundraising is in honour of Kieran Patching, from Walderslade in Kent, who was just 34 and described as a "normal fit guy" when he died.

His widow Julie said she was campaigning because "you would not wish this on your worst enemy".

Mr Patching was one of four men who died in the race six months ago.

The other victims were from Leeds, York and County Durham.

More than 50,000 runners took part in the half-marathon event on Tyneside.

Julie Patching told BBC South East Today: "Just knowing there were no goodbyes is the hard thing.

The four men died in warm temperatures during the run

"We'd been together 14 years, celebrated our 10th anniversary in July, and then that.

"Every morning I say, 'How can you have died, how can you be dead?'. The shock is so overwhelming."

Mrs Patching said she wanted to try to prevent her experience happening to anybody else.

She is fundraising alongside her mother-in-law, Susan Patching, who said coping with her son's death had been "unbelievably difficult".

"But we pull together as a family and I love Julie dearly, we're very close," she said.

"The children are the key, they're the ones that make us get up in the morning and face another day."

The coroner for Gateshead and South Tyneside ordered inquests into the deaths of all four men.