** UPDATE **

I completed the race in a relatively respectable 5h04m28s without walking a single stride on a very warm and muggy day in London - It was a truly fantastic experience and whilst my body is protesting a little this morning, it was great to be part of something so huge and for an excellent cause. Thank you so much to all of you for your generous donations so far - it will be very much appreciated and used for an excellent cause!

Hi everyone, firstly, thanks for taking the time to visit this link to give whatever you can to help me and my chosen charity, Hearing Dogs For The Deaf, to raise as much as possible. I'm running my first full London Marathon in April 2010 and after some 10 months of training in wind, snow, rain, sleet and sun and after hundreds of practice miles, I'll be lining up with everyone else to slog around the course in April.

Hearing Dogs for Deaf People is a great charity that maybe doesn't quite get the level of recognition that some of its larger colleagues does. However, they do a fantastic job by training rescue dogs that would otherwise not have a home or future to help make deaf people's everyday lives just a little bit easier. For more details, see their excellent website at www.hearingdogs.org.uk

I'll be posting a training and progress blog starting shortly,

and tweeting intermittently (mostly about the pain of training, early morning runs, half marathons en route and sponsorship) via http://twitter.com/simonknowlesy

To all our lovely clients at Bourne Vets, thank you in advance for your generosity and help towards this excellent cause: I promise I won't let you down!

To all my friends and family, thanks so much for helping out yet another charitable cry for help: I know frequent demands are made of you all for money in these tight times - it is a very worthy cause and it'll be a huge personal acheivement for me to haul my sorry self around the 26.2 miles in April!

Please, please give whatever you can, no matter how small to help me hit my £2500 target!

Simon
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