Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

It’s 25th February today and in exactly 2 months I’m going to be attempting to run (/hike) the Fellsman, which is a 61 mile (ish, depending on navigations skills!) ultra marathon in the Yorkshire Dales. https://fellsman.org.uk

I am nervous to post this as a fundraising event as I have no idea if I can run an ultra again, but I’d like to raise funds for Ashburton Mountain Rescue, my local branch.

I ran 11 ultras between March 2019 and November 2022. Then in 2023 I was plagued with these weird issues with my legs combined with fatigue, and it turned out I had a series of blood clots followed by a DVT. This never went and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever run much again, and over time it’s become scar tissue in my main femoral vein resulting in venous insufficiency (I have about 75% venous return in my left leg).

Then in 2024 I broke my left ankle and didn’t know it was broken for 6 months, and even now I’ve got about half the range of moment in dorsiflexion than I did before.

Over the last year despite these chronic issues I have found I am able to run again but it is so much harder than it used to be (not least because I got heavier, I have trouble with yo yo weight, having just two opposing states with food: hyper focus health freak or dysfunction and I can never choose which phase I’m in). I did discover that I could run a marathon again, so I can’t see any reason why I can’t run another ultra in theory. The theory isn’t going great as I’m simply unable to run as many miles of training as I want to as I get too tired, with all my effort I can just about manage what used to be my baseline effort of 100 miles a month. Will it be enough? Well I guess we’ll see!

Please help me raise funds for mountain rescue, no matter how this pans out they are a wonderful service and they need our support so they can function effectively. You never know, your donations might help kick me into my weight loss hyperfocus which is crucial for success (if the event was tomorrow I wouldn’t be able to finish it).

Each Mountain rescue team needs thousands and thousands of pounds every year to fund what they do. On average the Ashburton team gets just under 1 callout a week, and as charity run by volunteers they rely on the public for 92% of their income to fund their mobile incident control vehicle, Landrover ambulances, swift water rescue, rope rescue, medical, communication and specialised medical equipment.

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Thank you 🙏🏻