Hi everyone and thank you for taking the time to read this. As many of you will know, my beautiful sister, Sara, sadly lost her battle with motor neurone disease (MND) in May of this year. On October 16th, I, along with my good friends Shwan Hamidi and Sami Hedhli, will be running the Amsterdam marathon to try and raise some money in her memory. I came up with the idea of running this marathon while I was with Sara in Australia when visiting with my family back in March. We discussed where she would like any funds that might be raised to be channelled, and she felt very strongly that all monies should go directly to research projects as much as possible. Unfortunately there is still so much that we need to learn about this terribly cruel illness and hopefully we can raise some funds to try and accelerate some meaningful breakthroughs in terms of finding new treatments and ultimately a cure. I have spoken to the fundraising team at MNDA (motor neurone disease association) and they have said that they will ringfence all funds that we raise to go directly to research projects as per Sara’s wishes. 

The last time I embarked on any serious running was when I ran the Paris marathon back in 2010. The intervening 12 years have not been very kind to my body (all self inflicted), and the training has been tough to say the least!

Any contribution you can make, however big or small, will make a huge difference. Many thanks in advance for your support.

Loads of love,

Thomas, Shwan and Sami