I completed the Manchester Marathon on 10th October, which coincidentally was World Mental Health Day. Since it was my first marathon I wanted to raise a small amount of money for charity and a mental health charity seemed a fitting choice. I decided not to fundraise in advance of the marathon because I've got a long history of muscular injuries and I didn't want the extra pressure of worrying about letting people down.

My training had been going really well but 7 weeks before the race I started suffering from a string of injuries that were really challenging mentally and physically. I nearly didn't make the start line and certainly wasn't in condition to hit my target time, so my goal became just to finish. The injuries kicked in halfway through the race and I struggled through a lot of pain but managed to complete it in 4h 19mins.