Welcome to my JustGiving page.

Having missed out in both 2014 and 2015 because of injury*, I am running the London Marathon in April 2016 to raise money for The Lullaby Trust.

The Lullaby Trust do fantastic work in providing specialist support for bereaved familes affected by Sudden Unexplained Death in Infancy (SUDI), otherwise known as cot death.  The Trust also promotes expert advice on safer baby sleep to help reduce the number of SUDI incidents.

Having recently become a father myself, I cannot imagine anything worse than waking up one morning to find that my son had died during the night.  Unfortunately some parents are faced with this, including my colleague Nicola's sister Emma and husband Paul.  Emma and Paul's story is below:

In 2007 Emma & Paul suffered every parent's worst nightmare when they woke one morning to find their baby son Finn had died during the night.  Finn was only 3 months old, was a healthy little boy, and had died from SUDI (cotdeath).  To this day the cause of cotdeath is still not understood meaning that there are still around 600 deaths per year in the UK which the Lullaby Trust work constantly trying to reduce.  Their research to date has halved the number of cotdeaths since the charity was founded in 1971.  

Paul has run the London Marathon for the past two years, and he, Emma, family and friends have raised nearly £75k for the Lullaby Trust since Finn's death.  Paul has hung up his running shoes for 2014 which is where I step in (pun intended)!

My training has already begun and I'm aiming to run four or five times a week between now and April next year.  It'll be a challenge but one I aim determined to overcome, although the two weeks of running in the Scottish Highlands over Christmas and New Year might be a tad chilly!

Please give whatever you can to help support this very worthy cause.

* Unfortunately I suffered a knee injury in early January 2014 whilst training for the 2014 London marathon.  Despite plenty of physiotherapy my knee didn't recover in time for the 2014 race.  A cartilage tear was finally diagnosed and operated on in November 2014 which prevented me from running the 2015 race.  The Lullaby Trust have kindly deferred my place yet again and I am hopeful of being able to run in 2016.

To those of you who have already sponsored me for the 2014 marathon, a very big thank you for your support.  The Lullaby Trust are very grateful for your donations.  Please do give more if you can. 

Many thanks

John