I will be taking on quite a challenge over the course of 2020 by getting these stumpy legs moving, covering the Manchester marathon in April, and then a half marathon every month until the Birmingham Great Run half-marathon in October (start big then it can’t get any worse surely?!). 

All of this will be done with the aim of raising money for Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

My nephew Sasha is the reason why I want to push myself to doing the biggest challenge I have ever/probably will ever do! We had no pre-warning, but our beautiful Sasha was born with a bilateral cleft palette and unilateral cleft lip. This means the final part of him just didn’t finish forming fully, leaving him with gaps in his palette between his mouth and nose, and in his lip (as you can see in the photos). This results in speech and feeding difficulties. In just the first year of his life, Sasha underwent multiple surgeries to join his lip together and then join most of his palette. He will require another surgery when he is 8 years old to remove the remaining gap in his jaw bone.

Throughout all of these intense surgeries, and all of his pre and post-care, we couldn’t fault his care from the nurses, doctors and support staff at the hospital. The surgeons also performed such a wonderful job
on his mouth and lip. It was scary for everyone in the family each time he went in, but we were all treated with such kindness and made to feel like this little bundle of madness was in safe hands.

The hospital takes in over 125 cleft palette babies every
year so raising any money at all for the charity will go towards improving the care of these babies, and all the other many sick children they take into their care.

Per the charity themselves: "At Birmingham Children’s Hospital
Charity, we believe there’s always more we can do for our sick kids and that’s why we will always strive to do more for our patients and families. It’s our mission to raise the vital funds needed to make a real difference to all who use our hospital. Your support empowers us to take innovative approaches to treating some of the sickest children in the UK. Your fundraising enables us to make our hospital feel just like home. Your donations are helping us to find new ways to treat and cure childhood diseases."

If Sasha can go through such scary things before even his first birthday, I can run around a few roads and fields, and raise some money along the way.

I would really appreciate you digging deep, and donating any
money that you can for such a worthwhile cause.

This challenge is (literally) running throughout the year so the run schedule is currently:

- April: Manchester marathon

- May: Edinburgh half-marathon

- June: Cheltenham race course half-marathon

- July: Leamington Spa half-marathon

- August: TBC…thinking somewhere sunny!

- September: Robin Hood Nottingham half-marathon

- October: Great Birmingham Run