Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

For those of you who don't know (if not where have you been!) I'm going to be trying my hand at Ironman UK next year.

Im rubbish at asking for money, so I've totally ripped off the text below from a book I read (that's right, I can read!)  I don't have any minimum targets I need to reach to enter the event. But I thought this was as good an chance as any to raise money for a good cause.

So what is an "ironman?"

Ill be be getting up an some ungodly hour on a Sunday morning, filling myself with porridge, fruit juice and any other tasty carbs I can find, before slipping into a Lycra tri suit (keep carm!) and then garnish myself with friction reducing potions and adding a wet suit.

Ill then saunter down to a lake near bolton, to join about 2000 other similarly-clad athletes, neoprene fetishists and assorted nut cases. When the hooter sounds, we dash into the water to start the first of three disciplines:

DISCIPLINE ONE - a 2.4 mile swim

To give you an idea, 2.4 miles is roughly 160 lengths of a 25m pool. Except this is in a lake, in bolton, with 2000 lunatics, oblivious to whether they punch or kick you in he head! Fun!

Then when you drag your sorry water logged body from the waves, you strip off your wet suit revealing the skin tight tri suit (once again, calm!) and hop onto your waiting bike for:

DISCIPLINE TWO - a 112mile bike ride

No, that's not a typo-it is actually 112 miles. Appartently through lovely country side, but I suspect I will be a little busy trying to get oxygen into my lungs to enjoy the scenery all that much.

Finally, once I've completed the last of the hills, Ill leave the bike for discipline 3:

DISCIPLINE THREE - a 26.2 mile run

The more observant of you will have realised that is the marathon distance. If I avoid dying of exhaustion I'll then cross the finish line hopefully before the cut off time of 17 hours.

So I hope you think this is a suitably difficult challenge and a worthy cause for you to please please please sponser me