Lupus is an autoimmune disease that causes someone's immune system to attack their own body. It can attack any part of the body, at any time, and is currently incurable and unpredictable.

Lupus affects 1 in 750 people (90% of whom are women), making it more prevalent than MS, leukemia or muscular dystrophy. Yet doctors and scientists don't really know what causes lupus, why people get it how it works... in fact they know very little! As such, mis-diagnosis is common, with an average diagnosis time of 4 years!

Your donation could help change that.

I'm raising money for St. Thomas' Lupus Trust, a charity that works hard to support research on lupus.

What am I going to do?

I'm going to sweat through two sporting events. First, I'm going to run the Wimbledon Common half marathon in aid of Lupus UK (fundraising page). Then I'll row the same distance (21km) on a rowing machine in a gym in aid of St Thomas' Lupus Trust.

Note that I was orginally planning to run the half marathon in Edinburgh in May, commemorating one year since my girlfriend Ellie's diagnosis. Afcter a fall off my bike in April, and a resulting fractured rib, I've had to postpone the events. I'll be running in Wimbledon at the end of July, and row a week after that!

Finally, I'm also going to blog about lupus on The Butterfly Effect, a blog site that Ellie and I have set up to share our experiences and learning about lupus.

Why am I doing this?

My girlfriend Ellie was diagnosed with lupus in May 2012 and as she writes in the introduction to the site: "one of the hardest things about having lupus (for me anyway) is being surrounded by people who don't know what lupus is". So then, these fundraising efforts and the blogging is our attempt to do our part to change that.

Rowing on a machine?

Just to be clear, Olympians row 2km in their competitions. Of course, they do it on real water. Still, at my fitness level, 21km will take me at least 90minutes to get through so if nothing else, it's going to be really boring!

As for big print: Gift Aid if you're a UK taxpayer!