Thank you for visiting my fundraising page

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My London Marathon weekend didn’t start well as  I woke up on Friday with a stinking cold. The advice is not to run a marathon if you’re ill, so on Saturday I made contingency plans to run the Edinburgh Marathon in May and continued with the Lemsips.

On Sunday morning I decided to give it a go and took more painkillers 30 minutes before the race started. Luck was with me... I had a tough but storming run and beat my previous best by 1 ½ minutes to finish in 3:27:25

My thanks to the many generous people who have donated through this website or by cash/cheque; friends, family, strangers, AZ colleagues, fellow Vale Royal runners, Kingsmead friends and neighbours, Jacobs’s family and work colleagues.

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I am running the London Marathon on 26th April 09 (hopefully in 3 ½ hrs) to raise funds for research into a rare form of cancer called neuroblastoma.

I started fundraising in Dec 08 to raise funds for a little boy called Jacob Marsland. At only 6 years old, Jacob had been fighting a rare form of cancer called neuroblastoma for the previous two years. Despite having intensive chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy and stem cell recovery, Jacob’s only hope was to receive pioneering treatment in the USA and his family were trying desperately to raise funds for this treatment.

Sadly Jacob lost his fight against neuroblastoma on 9th Jan 2009 before he received this new treatment, leaving his parents Nicky and Anthony bereft. Only weeks after losing their precious son, they have decided to raise funds to research neuroblastoma

 ‘In the midst of our sadness there is an emerging belief that we can do something to help in the battle to find a cure for neuroblastoma. Jacob fought so hard against his illness and we have to make that count for something. To do nothing and simply try to get on with our own lives, although challenging in itself, seems wrong and somehow selfish. This is after all a rare cancer, predominantly diagnosed in young children and which receives no direct government funding in terms of research into a cure. There are though several organisations which seek to improve research into neuroblastoma and this is where we can do something to help. So, this is the plan; to help make a difference in the hope that one day, no child has to endure what Jacob did and that no parent will suffer the agony of losing a child to neuroblastoma.’