Good Afternoon All and thank you for your donations, it is with a great deal of reluctance, annoyance and no small amount of frustration that I will need to withdraw from running the London Landmarks Half Marathon due to injury. I have requested that your donation is refunded from Croydon Health Services Charitable Fund and these can be requested via JustGiving via the below link.

https://help.justgiving.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=137889

Thank you for your support and I'm sorry for the inconvenience

Chris

Croydon is one of London’s fastest growing boroughs with over 380,000 residents, with the youngest population of any London Borough. Compared to the average Londoner, people in Croydon have a higher rate of diabetes and heart disease and high number of Looked after Children. 

I will be raising money for Croydon Health Services Charitable
Fund to continue to support the work they are doing to provide emotional and practical support not only for patients but also for the staff that that care for them. 

Examples of how funds have contributed so far are

• Refurbishing of areas within the hospital and community
• Funding of staff and wellbeing projects
• Supporting life-changing research to pioneer new treatments

I hope you will be able to join me with the journey to contribute to the care for the people of Croydon and the staff who look after them.

I discovered the joy and benefits of running during Covid-19 wave 1, as an NHS employee and a Senior Nurse the situation was outside of everyone's comfort zone, Croydon, its population and the staff who worked across the Trust where hugely impacted by Covid-19 both within their personal lives but also their work lives, whist people where following government advice and staying behind locked doors our staff were coming to work and looking after patients with Covid-19 despite the high levels of fear and anxiety. Knowing that decisions that were made in such a fluid and fraught set of circumstances could and did have long term impacts on our staff, led to highly stressful situations, with a home and social life that did not reflect any level of normality during lockdown. A good friend introduced me running and motivated me to my first and subsequent 5k runs, not only improving my fitness, which was needed but also improving my health and mental wellbeing during what was one of the most challenging periods of the NHS. 

I feel that now I have the opportunity to utilise what I discovered running after work to give back and support the charity that supports the patients and staff who still feel the impact of Covid-19.