So earlier this year I accidentally clicked on a link on the Telegraph website and was sent an email a month later telling me that I had signed up for the Great North Run.  "How hard can this be?" I thought, "I've run a marathon and this is only half the distance...".  However, that was almost ten years ago when I was 21 and a student with lots of time to train.  This time, I'm just a wee bit older and sitting behind a desk and drinking at weddings apparently isn't the best training regime.

I'm running for a charity called Friends of Aschiana.  Aschiana provides food, shelter and basic education to the street children in Kabul and is currently the only street working children project in Afghanistan.  Aschiana means "nest" in dari.  Their website is www.friendsofaschiana.org.uk

There are somewhere between 40,000-70,000 street children in Kabul earning a living by begging, hawking anything they can find and other less desirable activities.  Many of these are orphans from the war.

So please do sponsor me, it's fairly painless on this site, and you can do that clever thing with UK tax reimbursement, if you're a UK tax payer.

Olly

p.s. Did you know that the average US citizen gives 1.7% of their earnings to charity..?  In Britain it's a measly 0.7%, but at least that's better than the French at 0.14%... so come on reach into your pockets (it doesn't even need to be that deep)

p.p.s. for those of you that enjoy schadenfreude, I will be sitting on a plane to the US for 8 hours the day after the race and NOT in business class. Ow, ow, ow!