After a year or so of uncertain hospital visits, tests and pain, in 2007 I was eventually diagnosed with Crohn’s disease.  The uncertainty about what this incurable disease might mean for my lifestyle was pretty terrible. Fortunately for me, over most of the following 10 years I was able to continue just with a whole bunch of medication (and the nasty side effects), a number of hospital visits and some lifestyle changes.  One of these lifestyle changes was to take up running, this was primarily to help deal with the day to day pain but also as a challenge to myself to ensure that I remained in control of the disease.

In 2018, things took a turn for the worse and the normal increase in medication was not working.  I spent pretty much the whole second 6 months of the year in constant pain.  Various tests couldn't identify quite what was going on but it did lead to a change in medication.  Unfortunately it came a bit too late and in December 2018 the Crohn’s disease ate through my bowel.  After 7 hours in the emergency theatre I woke up to discover that a 40cm length of my bowel had been removed.  Following surgery and a couple of weeks in hospital one of the first things to address in the recovery period was regaining the strength to walk, so with some physio and a lot of determination over the next few months I set about this task.  Sometime, during this phase I decided that I really wanted to do something to raise  money for Crohn’s disease and running a marathon seemed like the biggest challenge I could think of at that time.

This was supposed to be the 2020 London marathon, but due to  covid this event was cancelled just a few weeks before.  My deferred place was the October 2022 event, so it means I had to put in twice the training effort for the same event. Unfortunately, that will not result in a better time as both of these training blocks sandwiched a year of lockdown laziness.

Crohn’s disease is a lifelong condition where parts of the digestive system become inflamed.  The symptoms  may be constant or may come and go every few weeks or months. When they come back, it's called a flare-up.  There is currently no cure and the condition is managed with treatment programs.

The vital money that is being raised will enable critical research, support and awareness about Crohn's and Colitis making a difference to the thousands of people living with these lifelong conditions.