Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page, you are probably as shocked as I am that someone like me, who isn’t renowned for having any athletic prowess, is running in the London Marathon!

So why am I doing it? Having reached the grand old age of 40 I decided I wanted to challenge myself, do something completely out of my comfort zone and combine it with raising money for a great cause. I have always watched the London Marathon on TV and admired the effort and dedication of everyone who has run in it and thought that one day I’d love to do it myself.

What made my decision to do it a lot easier is that I am able to run it for a very special charity, Alzheimer’s Research UK.  Alzheimer's is a disease of the brain and whilst people with it can maintain a good quality of life for some time the hard fact is that it gets worse over time and there is no cure.  It affects over 850,000 people, and their families, in the UK and this number is rising. Alzheimer’s has hit our family hard over the years. The first time I heard about Alzheimer’s was when my Gran developed it when I was in my late teens.  It was shocking to see her rapidly change in front of our eyes from a kind, caring and strong lady into someone who couldn’t recognise any of her closest family, we lost her in 1998.

Sadly my Uncle Owen also developed Alzheimer’s four years ago and, since being  able to help me celebrate my 40th birthday in July, his condition significantly deteriorated over the next few months. Unfortunately Uncle Owen lost his battle with Alzheimer's on 17th November 2017.  He was a brilliant husband, father and grandad (and an amazing uncle!) and I know how difficult the last few years have been for Aunty Glenis, my cousin Helen and the rest of the family to see this horrendous disease take hold of him.

Every donation you can make, no matter how small will help:

• £20 pays for 1 hour of pioneering dementia research.
  
• £100 could provide the tools for scientists to map 10,000 genes in minute detail, identifying targets for the development of new treatments.
  
• £500 will cover the cost of a sensitive brain scan for a patient involved in a research study, tracking the effectiveness of new drug treatments, improving diagnosis and better understanding how diseases like Alzheimer’s wreak their havoc in the brain
  
• £1000 will pay for reagents, unique chemicals that are crucial for successfully growing cells in a laboratory ready for disease study 
  
• £2500 will allow researchers to buy synthetically made amyloid, to better understand this hallmark Alzheimer’s protein in the lab.
  

Please dig deep and help support this amazing charity so they can get closer to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s and I’ll do my bit by training hard so I get round the 26.2 miles in one piece!

Cheers

Sean

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. So it's the most efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the charity.