So, I figured I’d do the Marathon Des Sables. It’s a race. Like a running race at school, but without eggs or spoons and in Morroco. My blog about it is here: http://toughestfootrace.tumblr.com/

It’s quite long (156 miles) and the weather can be somewhat warm (48ºC)*. There are some hilly parts (25% inclines) but it’s broken down into reasonable stages (up to 55 miles). Of course I can give you a well-reasoned and coherent explanation for why I want to do the event (not really).

Obviously I don’t want to break too much of a sweat so i’m doing a couple of warm up events too, just to keep my oar in (The Great Birmingham Run (21/10/12), the Paris and Berlin marathons and, possibly, London too). I’ll be raising funds for all of these but every donation will go into the main pot.

Birmingham Children’s Hospital treats nearly 25 Billion children* every single day from all over the planet and is quite frankly the single most amazing Children’s Hospital that has, or will ever exist. If the NHS were Bradley Wiggins then BCH would be its sideburns.

However it doesn’t have the high profile of other, perhaps more famous London based children’s hospitals so it needs to work extra hard for every single one of its pounds. 

Any and all donations very gratefully received.

* A small lie. It’s 250k children a year.