THE dad of ski tragedy schoolboy Hayden Waller ran in the London Marathon yesterday, raising more than £5,000 for charity.

Gary Waller took up running after the death of 12-year-old Hayden during a school trip to Austria in February 2008.

“After Hayden died I was up at five in the morning and I didn’t know what to do, so I used to go running,” said Gary, of Harty Avenue, Wigmore. “I do a lot of my thinking and take out a lot of my frustration.

Gary, who has had his hair dyed partly blond in memory of his son, ran for Phabkids, a charity which supports integration of people with and without physical disabilities in the community. His time was five hours and nine minutes.

Taking part with him were his brother Tony Waller and Hayden’s godfather Vince Brearey.

They were cheered on by Gary’s pregnant wife Hayley.

Gary said he was also inspired by the money that was donated to charity at Hayden’s funeral.

“We raised about £2,500 for Make a Wish,” he said. “As bad as things were, it made me feel good.”

But he ran the London Marathon not just to raise money and awareness for the charity Phabkids but for both his sons, Hayden, who was a pupil at the Howard School in Rainham, and younger brother Aaron.

The mortgage advisor said: “People have said that Hayden lit up a room; I would say he owned it, he was a proper lad, he liked the girls and they liked him.

“Everyone else’s lives have moved on, people look at you and think we have got over it but we have not, we just deal with it our way.

Hayley said: “You kind of expect to get over it but it does not happen, you just learn to deal with it.

“Hayden was a big personality, he was just lovely."

The London Marathon is not the end of fund-raising for Gary who said he now hopes to run in Dublin in October, London and New York next year and possibly climb Mount Kilimanjaro in 2011.