Thank you for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page. Having done the Spartan Super Race and the Hackney Half Marathon (detailed below) it is time to finish the trilogy with the Wigan 10k. We are running on Sunday, 4 September and every £5 helps.

I am going to be competing in the Spartan Super Race in Orte, a town 63 km from Rome, on 23 April 2016.  I am running the Spartan Super Race with the men in black, Team Nero (no, not the crazy fiddler, nero means black in Italian).  The Spartan Super Race is approximately 15km and has at least 21 obstacles.  Our team is Amedeo Iannuzzi, Ben Morley, Kevin Watson, Derek Richardson and Robert Bricout and we are from England, Italy, the United States and South Africa.  In addition, two weeks later, some of us will be running the Hackney Half Marathon on 8 May.  It is a debut half marathon for me.

I am doing this not because I want to live longer, but because I want to live life to the fullest (with gratitude to Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running). More importantly, I am doing this because I want to raise funds to help Joining Jack combat Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

DMD is one of the most common fatal genetic disorders to affect children around the world. Approximately one in every 3,500 boys worldwide is afflicted with DMD with 20,000 new cases reported each year in the developed world. It is a devastating and currently incurable muscle-wasting disease, associated with specific inborn errors in the gene that codes for dystrophin, a protein that plays a key structural role in muscle fibre function. Symptoms usually appear in male children before the age of five. Progressive muscle weakness of the legs and pelvis eventually spreads to the arms, neck, and other areas. By age 10, braces may be required for walking, and most patients are confined to a wheelchair by age 12. Eventually, this progresses to complete paralysis and increasing difficulty in breathing, requiring ventilation. The condition is terminal, and death usually occurs before the age of 30. There is currently no cure for DMD, but for the first time ever, there are promising therapies in or moving into clinical development.

Joining Jack was set up by a remarkable family in Wigan when their son, Jack, was diagnosed with DMD. They have worked tirelessly with other families and charities trying to find a cure for DMD, which will be of benefit to all sufferers – the boys themselves and their loved ones. You may have seen Owen Farrell link his forefingers together after he has kicked a conversion – it is the Joining Jack sign.

Jack is eight years old. I want Jack and thousands of other boys like Jack to be able to live life to the fullest. I would appreciate any donation in support of Joining Jack. You will know that the amount raised will be for a worthy cause. 

Thank you, Robert.