My name is Roger Harrison and I have been working for the Royal Mail for 11 years.  I am an “outdoors” kind of person and love keeping fit, so when I discovered I was good at running some 10 years ago this ticked all my boxes.  Within the space of a year I had gone from a couple of casual runs a week to competing in my first marathon with a finishing time of 3hrs 32 minutes. 

Over the years I have racked up a variety of race times, with my personal best times being: - 3 hrs-20 minutes in the Nottingham full 1hr -27 minutes in the Leeds half marathon - 38 minutes for the Derby 10K run.  I thrive on setting myself new challenges and setting the bar higher each time, knowing that I am doing it for a good cause, or to raise money to help change lives, this makes me more determined to achieve my goals.  

As for 2018 we intend to run from Edinburgh Castle to Nottingham Castle over a 5 day period, the equivalent of 2 marathons a day. 
Even from an experienced marathon runner’s perspective it is not going
to be an “easy ride,” which makes me feel a little apprehensive.  Nevertheless, we shall be running for a great cause, the “Ossie Newell Foundation” to raise money to fund PhD students to conduct research into rehabilitation after stroke to make patients and families
lives better.  With the right planning and support from all kinds of people to enable this to happen we are confident that we shall be able to “drum up” enough sponsorship money for the Charity’s aims and make it through the finishing no matter what!

We have set this extremely ambitious challenge to raise much larger amounts of money than we have normally done before because we feel this is such a worthy cause!

One in six people will have a stroke in their lifetime.The impact of stroke in the UK takes a toll not just on the patient, but on family and friends and not insignificantly on the financial resources of an already stretched health service.The Ossie Newell Foundation is dedicated to providing funding to support one PhD student per annum at Nottingham University with the aim of raising the level of research in the area of rehabilitation after stroke.