As of May 2024, there were an estimated 982,000 people with dementia in the UK. This number is expected to rise to 1.4 million by 2040 and 1 in 13 people are diagnosed under the age of 65 years old. My mum was 1 of these 13.

Karrina

“Running has never been a strong point of mine but Nige and I have both decided to run the half marathon to raise money for Alzheimer’s, having both experienced the disease first hand.

My mum was diagnosed 10 years ago and had to give up work. She worked for 30+ years as a guardian ad litem where she helped children making sure they were with safe and loving families. She used to take me to peoples homes to make sure I knew how lucky we were! She loved her job and took such great pride in it, when the disease started to set in it upset her that she had started to make little mistakes and forget cases.

Mum used to work so hard, making sure she could take my brothers and I on holiday each year and take us to trips to London to watch musicals and theatre shows. My mum loved the stage!

Going out for dinner, having a spa, shopping, theatre, Only Fools and Horses and Faulty Towers were just a few of the things that she absolutely loved. I swear my loathing of shopping is due to the fact she used to drag us around the shops in Oxford Circus only to return the first shop we had originally gone to for the perfect top!

Seeing my mum now being taken over by Alzheimer’s makes my heart ache as I miss her so much. I miss phoning her at the beginning of the day to see what she was doing and then again at the end of the day to talk about how it went and what she’s eaten. Planning our girl trips, booking a holiday, or just getting tipsy and laughing til our sides hurt. Her laugh was always the loudest in the room, and so infectious!

Running a half marathon won’t change any of that, and won’t bring back the person I felt like was my best friend. But it will raise money to help research, hopefully one day help medication progression and help others delay the disease when diagnosed or even have some sort of cure. If we can make a difference to just one family we will have done our job! Alzheimer’s is not just memory loss, it’s your personality and sense of self slowly being buried under the diseases fog. It’s not recognising the people you love, or understanding your surroundings. Seeing my mum scared or confused is heart breaking and I can’t imagine what it must be like to not understand what is going on around you, to fear every person around you.

Her laugh is still there most days, her love for music and dancing, and her enjoyment of cake! Hopefully these are all things that will stay with her to the very end.

If you can sponsor us on our half marathon and share this page we would be utterly grateful”.

Nige:

“My best friend (Nan) only suffered with Alzheimer’s near her end of life so I only got a taster of what family’s have to endure. To see what this illness does to the person and friends and families is heartbreaking, when myself and Karrina discussed raising money to help support the charity, we challenged ourselves with something that would be hard! I ain’t no runner, so when we choose the Manchester Half, I was excited with the prospect of altering my training and working as a team to smash this Half marathon and especially in remembrance for my Nan. It’s incredible what you can achieve when you surround yourself with people who push you and encourage and I’m extremely proud to be running this with my partner in crime. Doing this for my Nan gives me immense pride and doing this to run for Jan and show to our 3 beautiful children what you can do when you work hard”.