Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page & Thanks to those who have already helped me break my first Fund raising target... I'd like to go for £750.

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Updates at the bottom of this story:

SO what is the challenge:

My 8 year old son plays competitive Tennis for Wiltshire and I started to play in January 2010 to keep up. Maybe a mad moment over the May bank holiday but an oppotunity came to take a challenge to beat the Guiness World Record for the longest Tennis Match currently standing at 36hrs:36mins:36sec. Our objective is to beat this but a stretch target is to go for 40:30:15.

The challenge will take place on 4th - 5th September at David Lloyd, Thamesdown Drive, Swindon. We start at 03:00 on Saturday 4th and the Tennis match will be started by the Lord Mayor of Swindon and we hopefully have some special guests / celebs joining us through the marathon to keep us entertained and more importantly awake....

The rules in short. A normal singles tennis match. We are allowed 5 minutes off court per hour or we can roll this up for 15 minutes every 3 hours. In the previous world record they played 512 games and 1 of the players only won 3 sets, so I am planning to at least do better than that.

Why?

Maybe because I'm reaching a certain age and this will be my last mad moment before the big day, but also this is an opportunity for us to raise some money for Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Charity with a base in Wiltshire. 

How can you help?

Firstly you can donate via this page and no matter how small the amount it all helps Breakthrough. I am also looking to have my employer match my total personal sponsorship amount so that doubles your donation before Gift aid.

You can turn up anytime during the 37+ hours, though I won't be offended if not many are their at 3AM on Saturday - Jan won't be there so I can't complain. 

If we make it, we have timed this event so we should be in the Christmas Issue BUT PLEASE do not buy it for me ...... I'd rather have socks, slippers and compeed.

Many thanks for your donation:

UPDATES BELOW:

UPDATE 29th AUGUST

1 Week to go: Training is going well and the 12 hour test went without a hitch or soreness. I have just returned from a 2 week holiday in Florida and managed to return lighter than when I left which is a miracle in itself and training in that heat was not always pleasant. I have now lost 8kg in weight and was upto and starting to slow the training in preparation. I write this knowing in exactly 7 days time it will all be over and hopefully we have done enough traiing to gett he record. and raise a lot of money for Breakthrough:

UPDATE 8th August

Just been on the phone with John Isner's agent who had that marathon 11hr match with Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon this year. Just told him we beat that with a 12 hour non stop practice on 31st July without the overnight breaks.......

UPDATE 8th July

Across the whole challenge of  Tennis World Record + 5-a-side World Record we are well on track to raise the £20,000 overall target. So far after 5 weeks intensive training I have lost 4kg and am now playing approximately 13-15hours tennis per week. Next step is a full 12 hours session end of July.