Dear Friends

John so enjoyed running the marathon last year that he is doing it again. His time last year was 4 hours and 5 minutes and he is very keen to break the 4 hour marker this time.

 Thank you all so much for your continued support.

Alison

Thank you for visiting my fundraising page. Last year I raised £5,000 for SPARKS. The charity is unique in the UK in funding research specifically into paediatric conditions. My research group into childhood cancer immunotherapy has benefited from several grants from SPARKS over the last few years. It is important to know , however, that the SPARKS grants are awarded by independent peer review and I am not doing the fundraising directly for my own research therefore, but rather to support the charity in general.

This year I am aiming for well under 4 hours but anything can happen on the day! I am up to 20 miles now in the weekly long training run at 8 min 30 pace per mile but I might hit the dreaded wall if not careful and collapse in a heap.

John

Donating through this site is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to sponsor me: SPARKS will receive your money faster and, if you are a UK taxpayer, an extra 28% in tax will be added to your gift at no cost to you.

So please sponsor me now!

Many thanks for your support.

12th March: thank you to all our supporters who have already raised half the funds plus Mr Darling will give SPARKS the tax back of course.  3 more 20 mile runs for John to do before he starts "the taper" to enable him to be fighting fit on the day itself. Let's hope it is not as wet and windy as the last few days.

Thank you once again for all your support.

March 19th.  Thank you to everyone who has donated. I have a new race target which is to beat the long standing women's marathon world record held between 1926 and 1963 by Violet Percy of Gibralter (3 hours 40;22). I tried to run the pace required in my long run last week but died after 15 miles and had to phone to be rescued. But I was recovering from flu so maybe i can do it on the day. A more realistic target is to finish under 4 hours. One more long run to do then some high altitude tapering and training in Snowbird Utah next week!!

March 31st: Thank you to all John's sponsors. He recovered well from the disappointment above, to run an excellent 20miles last weekend - suffice to say that I did the last 10 miles with him on my bike, and he outran me for the last 2miles of it - mind you it was all uphill against a wind, hard on a bike.........!! Even harder if you have already run 18 miles.

He is now at a cancer research conference in Utah and is running 10km every day before breakfast - rather him than me, the spa would be more attractive, I feel.

Thank you all once again and it is lovely to see a comment from Molly Treves whose beautiful picture was on this page last year. Alison.

April 8th:  5 days to go; thank you to everyone who has donated. Major scare last week when sprained ankle after skiing into a tree. Thankfully seems to be more or less healed now and will resume running again tomorrow. Meant to be resting now anyway.  Will update this next week with a full run down of the events of the big day!!!

April 12th: well it's the big day tomorrow and the whole family will be going along to support John. thank you so much to everyone who has sponsored him - togerther with the gift aid, we have reached nearly £3500, which is well over the target, thank you all so much for your generosity.

John will enter something on this page tomorrow night (!!) but hope you all enjoy watching on TV and maybe seeing him come in somewhere between Martin Lel and the Pantomime Horse.............

thank you all once again, Alison

April 15th

Thanks to everyone who sponsored me. I completed in 3 hours and 49, which was 16 minutes quicker than last year. My chip came off my shoe in the heavy rain half way through so if you look at the marathon website it will look like I did not finish!! I had a bit of a bad patch 18-21 miles but improved when I switched the iPOD on and just kept going for the last bit as best I could. The crowds really help keep you going at the end; plus the thought of all the SPARKS sponsorship!!!