Remembering Gerry Reilly
10 June 1948 - 6 September 2026
Race Director, Man on the Run · 2005-2018
For every Man on the Run, from the first race in 2005 to the last in 2018, Gerry Reilly was our Race Director. Through fourteen years and every start line, he was the constant - the steady hand who got hundreds of men and boys to the line and on their way, year after year.
Man on the Run was a 5km run and walk for men and boys, in aid of Cancer Research UK. It began at Herne Bay in 2005 as Run for your Life, founded by Steph Lam with Gerry's support and powered by the volunteers of Canterbury Harriers, the club Gerry coached for nearly twenty-five years.
Sarah Gower later took the race on from Steph, and it grew, spreading to Braintree in Essex and Battle and Seaford in East Sussex, all of which Gerry supported. Sarah, Gerry and Gerry's son Sean set out to make it something bigger still: the men's equivalent of Race for Life, the national fundraiser that men had never had. In the end Race for Life opened its own events to men - the very gap Man on the Run existed to fill - and the committee stood the race down rather than draw from the same runners.
Across those years, from 2005 to 2018, Man on the Run raised over £120,000 for Cancer Research UK.
Gerry died on 6 September 2026 after a battle with lymphoma over the summer. The cause was always personal to him, and it stayed personal to the end.
In his memory, and in place of flowers, his family are asking everyone who knew him, or ever ran with him, to give to Cancer Research UK.
