On 6th June I’ve signed up for the 12-hour Suffolk Backyard Ultra… which seemed like a good idea at the time.

The format is simple: run a 4.1-mile loop every hour, on the hour, for up to 12 hours. If you complete the loop within the hour, you get to go again. If you don’t… you don’t.

So overall that’s just over 50 miles if I manage all 12 loops. In practice, we’ll see how long common sense holds out.

I’m doing this to raise money for Suffolk Hedgehog Hospital, a small local charity that does excellent work looking after sick and injured hedgehogs (and other wildlife).

Over half of hedgehogs have been lost from our countryside since the millennium, and they’ve disappeared from a third of sites in towns and cities — which is far from ideal.

100% of the money raised will go directly towards caring for the hogs they treat, rehabilitate, and release. They rely on local support and donations, so anything you give genuinely goes a long way.

You can find out more about Suffolk Hedgehog Hospital at www.suffolkhedgehoghospital.com.

Hedgehogs are regular visitors to my garden and, having tried to save one with flystrike, I realised just how important it is to have people who actually know what they’re doing.

This is a charity I try to support whenever I can, so this felt like a logical next step. Possibly an overcorrection, but here we are.

🦔 The plan is to get through as many of the 12 laps as I can.

If you’d like to donate, feel free to chip in whatever you like.

If, however, you’d specifically like to encourage my poor decision-making or see me suffer, you can sponsor me by the lap, in the hope that it motivates me to endure as many of them as possible.

On race day I’ll be handing over the reins of this page to my wife, who (phone reception permitting) will post updates from midday onwards — so if you want to follow along as things inevitably begin to deteriorate, keep an eye out.

No pressure at all to donate, but if you do it’ll go straight to a very good cause.

Go on, do it for the hogs 🦔😉

Find out more about how you can support hedgehogs at www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk.

Peter