Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page. You are obviously a very intelligent and generous person and most likely extremely good looking.

So if you know me at all you will know that I am no runner. In fact exercise and I do not get on too well at all. I like activity - skiing, swimming, the occasional school outward bound trip - but not exercise. In fact (and you won't believe this but it is very honestly true) I am allergic to running. No, really! I come out in an intolerably itchy rash. I have to take an anti-histamine if I want to go out for a run. I bought a pack of 7 a year ago... there are 6 left.

'So why now?', I hear you ask. Truth is I kind of got bullied into it by my mate Andy. I had just had some really awful news, the worst, about my dear colleague, Mo, who had been suffering from cancer. She was truly an incredible person and I got really angry that this crappy disease had claimed such a wonderful life far too early. Also, another very close friend has recently been diagnosed with cancer for the second time. I was, at the time, acting in a production of Calendar Girls and I quoted one of my lines on facebook. "If we could get that much closer to killing off this shitty, cheating, sly, conniving, silent bloody disease that cancer is, I'd run around Skipton market smeared in plum jam, with a knitted tea-cosy on my head, singing 'Jerusalem'!"

So Andy suggested that I got up off my backside and did something about it in the form of running the Leeds 10k. Of course he didn't phrase it quite like that - he's far too polite. So, in my anger and upset, I said I would. And then one of my colleagues (equally upset and angry) said they would join me. And then another. And another... And now we have a lovely big team, all running for Sue Ryder which was the charity Mo and her family had nominated for donations at her funeral. I'm delighted and scared in equal measure. So here goes... 

UPDATE:  A week before the Leeds 10k I came off my bike and broke my ribs. It hurt. More than the physical pain, it hurt that I had trained so hard for the run and now felt I was letting everyone and myself down by not being able to to do it. I felt like I was letting Mo down too. But when I saw our incredible team achieving this amazing challenge on that hot day in July, I was so proud and in awe of all of them - we had done it! (Well they had...)

So now I am running (with a load of the team who are now seasoned runners and taking it all in their stride!!!) the Abbey Dash. And I can't wait.

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