London will be my second marathon, but it's not just another marathon. This time I will be raising money for the British Heart Foundation and in doing so honouring the memory of my Dad who I lost nearly 10 years ago. I hope that the money I raise will go to help with important research that might stop other families going through the same thing mine did. You can read my story below and please, if you can, donate. I promise to run the marathon as fast as I can and I promise that every donation will mean the world to me. 


Heart disease, heart failure, heart attacks, heart defects. They are so cruel because they rarely give us any warning. They do not prepare us for the inevitable, give us time to say goodbye. The day I lost my Dad was just another day, right up until the moment when it wasn’t. He collapsed outside our house doing a spot of gardening while my Mum had popped out to pick a relative up from the station. I was at law school in London worrying about a deadline the following day when I got the call. There was nothing anyone could do, despite the paramedics' tireless attempts to restart his heart. Doctors were able to tell me that it wasn’t a heart attack, that his heart had simply failed, but they weren't able to tell my why then, why that moment, despite my search for answers. His heart was weakened from a heart attack 18 years earlier, but he was monitored, healthy, active. He still played 18 holes of golf regularly, lived life to the fullest. He was full of life right up until the moment he wasn’t.

In the aftermath it was small things that brought home the crushing reality of what had happened. I remember finding the half drunk cup of tea he never got to finish. Not knowing what to do with the joint of roast pork (his favourite) which my Mum had been halfway through preparing. Spending hours trying to crack the password for his computer that none of us knew. We were unprepared, we had not expected him to be gone. He had been in the middle of preparations for an annual charity golf day which he organized, due to take place in just a week.

In the longer term it is the gravity of the loss that hit. Not just the loss of my Dad, but of all the other things that he has missed and I have missed him being there for. He didn’t get to see me qualify as a lawyer, something I know he would have been so proud of me for. He wasn't there to see me finish the New York Marathon in November, and he won't be there to see me finish the London Marathon. Life goes on, as much as I didn't want it to at times, but the way I see the world is forever changed. Unexpected phone calls strike fear into me and I can never escape the knowledge that the most innocent of days can change your life forever and take away the things you hold most dear. Death lurks behind every corner.

Nothing can bring my Dad back, or change the past. I didn't get the chance to say goodbye, to say all the things I wish I could have, or have him tell me all the things he knew but didn't get the chance to share with me. I don't want any other family to go through what mine went through, to be broken beyond repair. Coronary heart disease (including heart disease and resulting heart failure) is still the biggest killer in the UK. This means that hundreds of thousands of families every year will go through their own version of the hell that my family and I experienced. The British Heart Foundation is raising money to carry out vital research that will help to reduce the number of deaths. If that isn't a good enough reason to donate, it is also carrying out vital research into congenital heart defects to prevent babies, children and young adults dying far too early.