I'M RUNNING FOR RON

I will be running the 2025 London Marathon in honour of my dad, Ron Wolter, on April 27 - exactly one year after we lost him. But this is not a sad story!

Our Story

The truth is, we should have lost him years ago - no, decades ago. My dad - or "Pops,” as I called him - had a long history of heart troubles that started in his 50s, most of which were life threatening. Here are a few of the more significant events:

💙 1995: First stent and angioplasty (which he didn't tell his family, including his wife, that he was having implanted until he returned home from the hospital!)

💙 1997: Second stent and angioplasty

💙 2003: Open-heart surgery with a quadruple bypass and aortic valve replacement (he'd gone to the hospital with slight pain in his chest and he was told that he wasn't allowed to leave as he was at risk of having a heart attack any minute)

💙 2016: Third and fourth stents and angioplasty

💙 2016: Femoral endarterectomy

💙 A second (yes, second!) open-heart surgery and aortic valve root replacement to repair a leak in his heart (turns out he'd had an infection for many years that had nearly eaten a hole in his heart, only stopped by scar tissue from the first open-heart surgery - no, this is not the plot of a horror movie, this actually happened!)

💙 2019: Fifth stent and angioplasty

I have no idea how my family and I were so lucky, but we got to have Pops around for a LOT more years and countless memories than if he hadn't received the treatment he did. He met his two grandsons and watched them grow into teenagers, he flew to London to be Best Man in my wedding, he helped both of my sisters and me buy our first homes. Pops wasn't just alive, he was LIVING.

My family and I have many, many people to thank for giving us the chance to make all those memories, and that's why I'm raising money to support Heart Research UK (HRUK). More than half a billion people around the world are affected by cardiovascular diseases and cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally (World Heart Report 2023), so the more organizations like HRUK that contribute to reducing the risk of heart disease, the more memories can be made by families like mine.

Thank you for all the memories yet to come for the billions of families affected by heart disease worldwide.

About Heart Research UK

Heart Research UK inspires and invests in life-saving medical research into the prevention, treatment and cure of heart disease, as well as supporting ground-breaking training and education. To date, HRUK has invested over £30m into research all across the UK.

HRUK's mission statement: together we will prevent, treat and cure heart diseases through research, education and community support until there are no more deaths from heart diseases.

Learn more: https://heartresearch.org.uk/

Resources

Follow my Running for Ron training journey on Strava: https://strava.app.link/DWxx1oOJXQb

See the rest of the team raising funds for HRUK in the 2025 London Marathon: https://strava.app.link/hRXQWnjMXQb

Read about the 2025 TCS London Marathon: https://www.londonmarathonevents.co.uk/london-marathon