The below was true when I signed up for the Berlin Marathon. Since then I’ve been injured, at one point not able to run 500m pain free, and my training wasn’t as planned. The weather tomorrow is also forecast to be very hot.

Long story short - sub 3 hours is no longer realistic. I’ll target that at my next marathon (Valencia) and focus on enjoying the day.

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It's unusual that I raise sponsorship when I run a marathon, but since my next one (Berlin) will be my 30th, I wanted to mark it by raising money for a good cause.

Last year my mother-in-law Sue lost her fight with cancer. One of the first treatments that she undertook was cutting edge immunotherapy. The immunotherapy trained her body to fight the cancer cells, extending her life. Before the cancer mutated, her treatment reduced the tumour to 1/8th of its original volume. The treatment also enabled her to, more or less, continue as normal for a bit longer - even allow her to continue sailing.

I’m raising money for the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) because one of their research areas is immunotherapy. I hope that by raising money for the ICR, their research can help others suffering cancer the opportunity to maintain their quality of life.

I feel uncomfortable asking for sponsorship for me to run a marathon now that I have run so many. I know that often people run a marathon as 'a once in a lifetime' challenge. For me, the challenge remains, but it has evolved. I’m hoping that in September, after some close attempts, I’ll finally run a sub 3-hour marathon.

Given my job, I thought I now have the making of a data set, so my marathon stats are:

Mean – 3:32:36, Standard deviation – 31:51mins, Fastest - 3:01:13, Slowest – 5:26:35 (I walked most of it as I’d run a marathon the previous weekend). Removing the 2 outliers where I wasn't focussing on time (Marathon du Medoc & Dramathon), gives an improved mean (3:24:13), sd (15:48) and slowest time (3:54:14).