2016 sees the 40th Anniversary of the foundation of the charity RP Fighting Blindness. To celebrate the anniversary my Uncle Roger has put together a team of runners made up of family and friends to take on the London Marathon!

The Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is the name given to a group of inherited conditions of the retina that lead to a gradual progressive loss in vision. Difficulties with night vision and peripheral vision are the first things that are noticed;later, reading, colour, and central vision are affected. There is currently no cure for retinitis pigmentosa, but many researchers are working hard to develop a treatment.

TeamBlind as a Bat was put together by my uncle, who has RP himself and is trustee and long-time supporter of the charity. He ran the London Marathon for RP Fighting Blindness in 2010 with my dad, and has decided to take on a bigger challenge this year and involve the whole family and many of our friends. 

The team is raising money for Professor Robin Ali of the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, who is a world-respected medical researcher and leading expert in the field of gene and stem cell therapy. Roger and my dad raised moneyfor the start of a pioneering five year gene therapy research project of Professor Ali’s in 2010, which aims to develop a treatment for RP, and now we want to help him fund its final year. The money raised by Team Blind as a Bat will be contributing to building a programme of clinical trials, which is the next stage of finding an effective treatment. With your support Team Blind as a Bat can help see this vital research through to its conclusion.

We have a team page which holds the full total of money we have and are still raising. Please take a look at it: https://www.justgiving.com/BlindasaBat2016/

I wanted to make my own page to update everyone on my progress, and try and reach my own individual target. Thank you for any donations, they are so greatly appreciated. 

                                             THE TEAM: 

Roger Backhouse, David Wynne Griffith, Will Harrison, Amber McClory, Dominic Steele, Susan Chester, Hugh Miller, Alex Taylor, Alex Backhouse, Jamie Wynne Griffith, Tom Rowe Jones, Tom Backhouse, Zephirine Warde-Aldam, Will Crisp, Esme Backhouse, Emily Naylor, Harry Spendlove, Sam Goldblatt, Rob Gibson, Harry Coe, Will Pearson, Charie Dorey, Gareth Abbott, Max Brown, Ed Oram, Cesca Gavins

TEAM MANAGERS: Theo Backhouse, Maddy Coe and Oliver Backhouse