Long Week is Japan is my homage to Stef, an old friend and an amazing person who died of Motor Neurone Disease in August 2014, and his mother who died of the same condition when we were 16.

Stef's decision to have his life support switched off was undoubtably the bravest decision I have ever know any man make, and it gave me the opportunity to say goodbye to a dear friend. A dear friend who, until then had been staunchly guarded about his own mortality. Part of what we discussed was me doing something to commemorate Stef, to give him a legacy and raise money for the charities fighting the disease he, and his mother died of.

Initially the plan was to cycle from Stef's mother's home town of Okaya, Japan, to Lake Toya to complete Ironaman Japan...unfortunately that event got cancelled! After much deliberation and having explored some options I realised, ironman or not, this pretty sweet lake is still there, a long way from Okaya with some pretty awesome road along the way!

So I made a new plan...I'm going to ride a total of about 1500km taking in some incredible natural and man made land marks on my way from Okaya to Lake Toya. Once I'm there I'm going to chill my beans for a day, then have a bit of a swim (distance and legality to be confirmed!) and run the 46kms of of the lakes shoreline.

All the while I've been training, I managed 3 marathons last year and I've been hitting the bike pretty hard. I'm yet to hit the water...in fact it's been half a decade since I last did any meaningful swimming, but I'm getting to that!

It means the world that you have read this far, and thank you for any money you have donated! If you would like to read more, there's a blog you can follow my progress on here www.longweekinjapan.wordpress.com and you can follow, like share and all that @longweekinjapan on Instagram and Twitter.

Thanks again

Rauri

Watch the video here:
https://www.facebook.com/rauri.hadlington/posts/10100905838609566