I'm taking on the Aspire Channel Swim 2019 following on from last year's successful challenge. In 2018 my friend Rachel and I completed the initial 22 mile challenge and carried on... I was getting fit before a total knee replacement. By the time the surgery happened I had swum around 56 miles... the distance from England to Ireland... 

Since the surgery (in April 2019) I have been battling to get back to full fitness... I slowly swam anotherv14 miles... and at the start of September decided to do the channel distance swim again... and then on to get to 100 miles...

Each mile is 65 lengths of our local pool... it taken about an hour... sometimes more sometimes less depending on knee and joint pain... I have an RA type of auto immune disease that is rotting my joints, so fitness is essential... I can't do breaststroke legs and I can't do crawl arms so it is mainly done with backstroke or advanced doggy paddle!!

Every four hours someone is paralysed by Spinal Cord Injury and Aspire provides essential advice, housing and assistive technology that spinal cord injured people need to live their lives independently. This is a huge challenge, but the more I raise, the more of a difference I'll make, so please be generous!