Helllooo and thank you for being on this page!!! My name is Adalia and I’m a 21 year old from Singapore. I’m currently living in London, where I’m in my third year studying Law at King’s College. Thank you so much in advance for reading this :-) As you might have gathered, I’m running the London Landmarks Half Marathon 2023 as part of Team CASPA, a charity supporting the autistic community! 

Autism is a disorder that’s quite significant to me. My older brother (swipe to see a photo of us!) is autistic, and honestly I really struggled with it growing up. It was difficult for me to understand and communicate with him, and I think quite often I let myself miss out on opportunities to connect meaningfully. Sometimes I think about how - if growing up it was difficult to look past the differences and fully accept someone so close to me, then what more so for someone without a personal connection. And so I’m doing this to help raise awareness and beat the stigma. The struggles of autism are difficult enough, and it’s not fair that they have to battle what others think as well. 

My family is fortunate to have the resources to support my brother as best as we can, and for that I am immensely grateful. But I know that there are many other families and autistic individuals who may not be as privileged and whose struggles feel a lot more isolating. I would like to run LLHM for them. 

A fun fact is that coincidentally, LLHM falls on World Autism Awareness Day this year!!! Another fun fact is that this will be my first ever half marathon (or indeed any race of any distance) so this will be exciting to say the least! I run a little here and there but I definitely don’t consider myself a runner - one of my motivations for doing this was to try and spice up my life in 2023 so I took this coincidence as a sign and decided that partnering with CASPA would be the perfect way to do it. 

CASPA has been lovely all this while at supporting me through this journey and I really think they do great work. I was especially drawn to them because while most organisations provide information about autism and supporting someone with autism, CASPA also provides social activities for autistic individuals, which I really like and feel that many other organisations overlook. I know my brother would have loved to be able to take part in social activities and meet more people, because being autistic can sometimes be lonely. 

Thank you so much for reading this and for supporting me in any way that you can! I would love it if you reached out to me with anything you wanna know or even if you have any advice on how to train (think I might need it). Thank you again & I hope you have a brilliant day!!!!!! 💙