Marathon effort: Thousands of Gold Coasters will be running for a cause in the Gold Coast Airport Marathon this weekend, including friends and family of the late Scott Sullivan

THOUSANDS of Gold Coasters will be running for a charity at the marathon this weekend, including sports reporter Heath Kelly who recently lost a close friend.

Ironwoman Courtney Hancock is helping the MND and Me Foundation (Motor Neurone Disease) founded by Scott Sullivan (pictured) by doing their "million metres" charity swim on the 22nd September.

Brave. Selfless. Inspiring. Trying to find words to describe someone you consider your hero isn’t easy.

You fear they are going to sound glib, that they won’t do that person justice. And you know the person you are talking about wouldn’t want to be labelled with those terms either.

That he saw himself as just a regular bloke.

But Scott Sullivan wasn’t ordinary.

He was brave, he was selfless, he was inspiring. He was the one that covered my rent when as a broke backpacker, I moved into a share house in London. He was the one with the questionable affection for the Spice Girls. Yes, seriously.

Ironwoman Courtney Hancock supported the MND and Me Foundation (Motor Neurone Disease) founded by Scott Sullivan by doing their "million metres" charity swim.

The one with his yellow bomb called “Betsy” parked out the front of that southeast London home that ferried us to rugby games. A home filled with the optimism of being in your early 20s with barely a responsibility in the world with Europe and beyond at your doorstep. The kind of freedom you later realise is fleeting, a place where friendships are forged.

Scott or Sully, as everyone knows him, and I became mates in that house. I was just one of his many. Sully was also a son, a brother. He was to become a loving husband to Sarah, a father of two beautiful children, Abbey and Charlie.

He played rugby, an energetic half-back for Sunnybank, he loved to bark orders at the forwards. He had a special affection for the Rabbitohs, the Reds and Wallabies. He enjoyed a beer or, occasionally, some kind of fruity cocktail. Yes, seriously. He loved his Suncorp job. He loved his life.

But tragically, that life was cut short. Sully died two months ago. It was the end of a more than three-year battle with motor neurone disease, a cruel condition that kills the nerves that send signals to the muscles that allow us to move, eat, speak and breathe.

There is no known cure and life expectancy is three to five years after diagnosis. In late April, Sully fell and hit his head at his Brisbane home. He never recovered.

In the two months since his death there has been tears and laughter, as those that knew and loved Sully started to come to terms with him no longer being here. We’ve all thought a lot about Scott, about friendship and family and what is important in life. It’s been a confronting experience for many of us in our 30s and 40s who had never experienced the grief of losing a friend.

Now I have had a chance to reflect on the life of Scott Sullivan, if there is one word that I believe does sum him up, it is “teacher”. And we will still be learning the lessons he taught us for years to come.

During a speech at the inaugural MND Gala Ball in Brisbane in 2011, one of his many initiatives, he mentioned that he often told the risk team he managed at Suncorp that “setbacks were an opportunity to learn”, This was his approach to his diagnosis. Regardless of the outcome he was going to make every moment count.

Scott Sullivan’s kids Charlie and Abbey.

Once Sully was told he had a terminal illness in 2010 he exposed his life to the world to give them greater understanding of what he and his family were going through.

In a similar situation I and probably many others would have retreated into their shell.

Not Sully. He did this, not for his own sake, but for others.

Realising that there was not enough support for those suffering MND, resources for their family members or funds for research, he established the MND and Me Foundation.

Not knowing where to turn himself, he immediately set about putting in place a structure to help ease the stress for others when confronted with the same diagnosis as him.

He was being educated and we in turn by him.

His fundraising efforts were tireless. Gala balls, corporate swimming and golf days, media appearances, he even rode a specially modified bike with fellow sufferer Ian Davis, a Melbourne doctor, from Brisbane to Sydney to spread the MND message.

I see the smile on his face as he and Ian cycled into Manly in Sydney, just over 12 months ago. The beers were well earned that night.

Two weeks pedalling took a toll on his health but, realising time was of the essence, Sully was desperate to ride to raise funds for and awareness about MND.

For the same reason he completed two Gold Coast Half Marathons after being diagnosed, the first in 2011 and then again in 2012 and, as his legs started to lose strength, he managed the 5.7km challenge last year.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars has been poured into research and on June 21 Sully’s vision, the Queensland MND Centre, a place for sufferers, carers, researchers and volunteers, officially opened.

To me, this resource, which will help thousands of people cope with the most traumatic event in their life, will be a way that they too will come to know Sully in the same way his friends and family knew him.

Despite not being with us anymore, this centre is testament to his generosity and desire to help others. The kind of bloke that would pay the rent of a broke backpacker at a share house in London.

The last time I saw Scott was the day after the most recent MND Gala Ball in March. Everyone was aware of the toll that the disease was having. He had already had a fall which he was unable to break because his arms no longer functioned. His speech was becoming increasingly hard to understand. For all of us it was heartbreaking but if Sully and his amazing wife Sarah could cope then so could we.

That afternoon we sat chatting at his house as he drank some sickly alcoholic cider out of a straw. “It’s my new drink,” he told me. He was like that with his drinks. Last time I joined him for breakfast he ordered an iced chocolate with whipped cream. That day, our kids played together and we watched the footy. He was more than likely secretly enjoying the fact that my Eels lost in the last minute.

I realised how lucky I was just to have an hour to sit there and chat and enjoy his company.

When I was leaving I said I was looking forward to seeing him on the Gold Coast as one of the dozens of his friends and family that were going to hit the road and raise money for the foundation at the marathon weekend.

Sully’s fall happened a month later. We have mourned and continue to but while he won’t be at the starting line this week as he has been for the past three years, trust me, he will be right there running every step with us.