This is Jim,

You must have heard by now that on Sunday 21st September I ran the Berlin marathon, this is why your at this site hopefully to give your generous contribution to a charity I feel very passionately about.

If I have not had a chance to tell you about the run yet, let me tell you now... it was hard! quite painful, but extremely satisfying from beginning to end. I finished the 26.2 miles in 4hrs 39 minutes.

The day began like any other typical Sunday morning with a nice lye-in, only this wasn't a typical Sunday, we were in Berlin to run a marathon and we had over slept!!! Still on English time one hour behind (we ain't no traitors, isn't that right V?!). We were late! Thankfully my family was in town to offer their support and call us several times to remind us how late we were for the start of the race. (Cheers mum!) After waking up Ed and scrambling about for a while to get our stuff together, we were surprised to see Jonny up and raring to go! Bare in mind he had decided not to run due to injury, he suddenly had woken with a desire to run 26 miles (we had no doubt that he was in no way sober, yet sounding confident with this decision), his enthusiasm was very encouraging. We ran down to our nearest U-bahn station and desperately navigated the Berlin underground to find the start line. At this point becoming increasingly aware that nobody else seemed to be on there way to running the marathon today, only normally dressed Germans with shocked expressions on their faces. This was the general reaction we provoked while causally jogging through closed off streets is search for the elusive start line. Finally while asking for directions from a german lady, she felt it necessary to inquire if we were planning to run today, when we replied with a naturlich Yes, she laughed in disbelief "you can't it starts in 5 minutes!" Unperturbed we put this down to ruthless german time keeping, reassuring ourselves that with 40 thousand people running, it would take ages to clear them off the start line. Ed convinced us we had time for one last round of croissants, treated us to a last minute meal! We picked up the pace and only 20 minutes later we found ourselves at the finish line.... knowing that the start line was not far from view, I felt a little relief. After navigating several streets through the runners village, the line was finally in sight. It was about this moment that Ed began to limp and announces his retirement from the race! His knee (which in fairness had been giving him jip for the last month) had completely given in, a good 500 meters from the start. For me this was simply a bit of a shame, for Ed it was a moment of disappointment, that possibly saved his life, for Jonny it was a moment of sudden & complete soberness, his ambitions to walk the marathon despite his injury disappeared almost faster than they had mysteriously appear only hours before!

Alone, jogging down the wide,open, empty street to the starting line was a fairly surreal experience, taking comfort in the fact that a few other runners were still making their way to the start as well, I decided it would be a good idea to stop and do a few stretches, the time was 9:20am and no sooner than I began stretching, I heard the final call on the speaker system, "Achtung, achtung! Schnell bitte err please cross the start line or you will not get a time!" This was the cue to cease stretching and finish the warm-up with a quick sprint to the start line...

At 9:21 I crossed the start line, I had just begun, but the marathon might well had been over with the way I felt at this moment, elated I was off, in search of the crowds of runners ahead, after not long, I was flying past the stragglers at the back of the pack from starting virtually last, I found over taking played a big part of this game, finishing 21,777. The first hour was full of excitement, the crowds, the music, a sound atmosphere, this carried on for a short while, then halfway arrived and it started to feel like hard work... I managed to pull a few muscles in my legs which didn't help, thankfully my foot which I forget to mention hurt from the leaving the apartment had just about gone numb by now. But grumbling a side, fortunately I (was british about it!) made it round in one piece, the last 10Km I could have lived without, but no worries. I crossed the finish line through the Brandenburg Gate and collected my medal, completed running all the way.

It was an important day for me, as it satisfied a long aching desire to run, from a time almost two years earlier, when my health wasn't allowing me to move much at all. Thanks to my mechanical heart valve I can now run and it's beating with a base louder than ever. A big thank you to my support team on the day who there to watch me, making it all worthwhile and though Ed and Jonny never quite made it, their contributions to the buildup and especially the after celebrations were outstanding!

So that was my attempt at the Berlin marathon, thank you for taking the time to support me and your sponsorship is very much appreciated by me and I'm sure all those who will benefit from the cause in the future. I will personally make sure Rainforest Concern spends it wisely!

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