Hello, good evening and welcome,

 

About 2 years ago, Nick and I did the Berlin Marathon which I completed in 5 hours and 25 minutes and was passed by a man inside a steel ball. For those of you who have been passed by 8ft high steel balls (and you know who you are) you will appreciate the nightmares are steel with me (see what I did there). The memory of the pain and humilation this caused has, somehow, developed a rose-tinted glow to the point that earlier this year, we agreed to do another one in Amsterdam. A Dutch Marathon if you will. 

The reason I chose Amsterdam? Simple. It's flat. No hills. Just canals. Near canals and far canals...basically plenty of water to push cocky upstarts in steel balls into.

I have 3 targets in doing this :

 

   1. To complete it in under 4 hours 30 minutes

   2. To raise £2,000

   3. Not to be passed by anything even vaguely spherical.

Training is going well so far, which given my knee op in April (oh it was agony...pass me a violin) I am very pleased about. The shrapnel wound is also giving me a bit of trouble but I don't really like to talk about it.

On our last outing, we raised about £5,000 for Macmillan and so we thought we'd try and raise a similar amount this year. Nick is running for Macmillan again, and I am running for the British Lung Foundation (BLF). We decided that if we split the charities, we could cover off a larger number of major illnesses...got to invest in your future.

The BLF provide support to people with lung diseases, which include pulmonary fibrosis, lung cancer, asbestosis, asthma, bronchitis as well as a few more I hadn't heard of before. They provide support in the form of nursing, mobility and fitness training, over 200 support groups throughout the UK and lobbying for better care for lung diseases.

There is a chance that after running 26.2 miles, that I am going to need a spare lung...no flies on me.

I appreciate times are tough at the moment, so please do not feel obliged to donate, but if you can spare a few quid, you can rest assured it will be going to a great cause.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for any donations you are able to make.

 

All the best,

 

 

Alastair

 

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