It is widely agreed by all the world's greatest adventurers and athletes that of all the world's greatest physical challenges Man can face, there is one that casts a shadow of fear wider, darker and more daunting than any other: The Run to the Beat London 21k.

It is said to be an impossibility to complete; that its finish line does not even exist and that it’s mere undertaking is nothing more than a fatal folly. Though there are hushed whispers that a team of Estonian army mountaineers finished the course in November of 1932, there are no records to validate this claim and none of the team survived to give testimony.

Having missed the London Marathon in favour of running away to Guatemala for the best part of a year, I, Nick Cressey, return to England in 2012 with one intention in my tiny male mind: to undertake this most gruelling of physical challenges.

I will harden my body, steel my mind and transcend both my psyche and the normal limits of animal endurance in order to face down the hardest 13.11 miles of terrain on the face of God's Earth.

All this in the name of the Elimination of Leukaemia Fund.

I ask that you simultaneously show both your hatred of cancer and your appreciation for daring, danger and the boundless imagination of human courage... by sponsoring me about a tenner or so.

If I do not make it, tell Christina Aguilera that I love her. Even when she's chubby. If anything, I kind of prefer her like that.

Gracias mis compañeros y nos vemos en el infierno.

Nick x