Welcome back everyone!

We’re here for round two. And this time I’m doing two marathons in a week. The Manchester marathon and a week later the London marathon. This is all in aid of raising money for Diabetes UK.

For those of you who don’t know or need a refresher here is why I’m raising vital funds and awareness for this incredibly important cause.

In December 2021 I ruptured my bicep playing rugby. It’s an injury where you need it fixing asap if you ever want full control of it again otherwise it recoils back up your arm and it’s hard to ever get it back down again.

So I went in for reattachment surgery on NYE 2021. Surgery was a success and I regained full use of my arm and muscle - thank god! However, in the days following my surgery I knew something else was seriously wrong.

I was drinking litres and litres of water every half hour, weeing all the time, becoming extremely fatigued and most notably I lost 12kg in 6 days.

On the Friday morning my wife booked me in for a blood test. Thankfully the doctors at Holmes Chapel Health Centre worked fast and by 6pm that same evening I had a phone call from Dr Dinesh Bailoor who informed me he believes I am type 1 diabetic and I need to quickly come into the surgery to check the ketones in my wee to be sure.

Once I did this, he told me I had to go to hospital asap as I was entering something called DKA which is life threatening, and he didn’t want me to stay at home over the weekend.

I rushed in and was assessed then taught how to inject and informed of my new life going forward. I stayed in over the weekend but ended up discharging myself on Sunday night (our due date with our first baby).

I couldn’t believe it. 32 years I’d lived a healthy active lifestyle and now I had a disease for the rest of my life.

This isn’t just for me, in just our friendship group alone there are 4 of us with type 1, 3 of us diagnosed in our late 20’s early 30’s. It’s something that is becoming more and more prominent in our age bracket and something I believe should be brought into the forefront.

My life now consists of eating the right things at the right time, injecting, exercising when my bloods will allow and exercising when my bloods are telling me I NEED to.

Please read, share and follow this journey in supporting my two marathons!

All updates will be shown on my Instagram page athletic.and.diabetic ✌🏼