Training as been back in full swing for a couple of months and the new dates are set for April 5th-11th 2018. Thank you to Dr Phil Clarke who will provide support and AECC University College, Mountain Fuel, The Cycle Jersey and Wolph Online for their continued support. Also, thank you to Muc-Off and High5 Nutrition for their support in the lead up to the original date in June.

In Britain today:

425 people will lose their lives to cardiovascular disease.More than 100 of these people will be younger than 75.7 million people will be fighting cardiovascular disease.515 people will attend hospital with a heart attack.190 people will die from a heart attack.12 babies will be born with a heart defect.I am one of those six million as are my dad and others in my family, we all fight a daily battle with hypertension. Also, my brother was born 8 weeks premature in June 1985 with a heart defect. Born in Southampton General Hospital's specialist baby unit he was lucky to receive the help he did but the prognosis was not great. Fortunately they were able to prolong his life long enough for him to have pioneering heart surgery that corrected the defect for good. On Christmas Day of 2016 we lost my paternal grandmother who had battles with dementia and, it turned out, had suffered a number of mini-strokes and heart attacks.

As a family we have regularly raised funds for the fantastic British Heart Foundation to fund more research into conditions and identifying treatments, genetic links and cures. THis stems from their research helping doctors to keep my brother alive after being born with a variety of heart defects in 1985. Having been given days to live at most he survived and is now a 32 year old Cambridge graduate and Lt-Cdr in the Royal Navy.

I have worked on a number of endurance events and decided that now it was time for me to have a go and put my own body through the exertions of training and a gruelling event! That's why I proposed 1242: Bournemouth to Glasgow. Starting at Royal Bournemouth Hospital I will head for Worcester, take a left to Aberystwyth (where I studied for my undergraduate degree), turn north and head for the mountains and Bangor (where I studied my postgraduate Masters) before taking a left and heading for Liverpool and up to Edinburgh before finishing in Glasgow 7 days later. I chose Glasgow because it had the highest incidence of cardiac deaths both over and under the age of 75.

I hope to raise as much money as possible and hope you will all be able to give whatever you can!

Thank you all for your continued support,

Phill