Update: I ran and did it in 2:05. Thankyou all for having faith!!!
Hello. This is me. I’m a 37 year old former hockey player with a dodgy disc and a torn shoulder capsule, and I need you to believe that I can run a half marathon, 11 years after my last one.
After having kids and a couple of catastrophic injuries I had about 3 years off exercise. Then one day at a bbq, my friend Rob and I had an idea. Here we are several months later and we’re just over two weeks out. I had hoped to train for about 1:45, but sadly I’ve lost 7 weeks training with chest infections and colds this winter, the last of which is still a bit with me. Last night I got round a 9.5 miler and it was enough for me to think I’ve got a chance of getting round! Although the time will be less exciting!
The other thing is i’m a trustee of a wonderful organisation running early years care for children from under privileged backgrounds in certain areas of bath. We run two nurseries and a specialist setting providing Early Years Education and therapeutic services to children with additional needs from Bath and North East Somerset. Every year the finances are frighteningly tight, and the organisation needs help to keep doing its thing:
In the early 1990s local families working with local health visitors and teachers recognised the need for high quality, flexible and affordable childcare to address barriers to employment and ensure that children had the very best start; to learn and develop. They set up First Steps, a grass roots charity deeply embedded within the community, they recruited, employed and trained local people, offering good terms and conditions of employment and fair pay demonstrating that families are able to be better off in work.
And if that’s not enough, you should definitely donate to celebrate my audacity in booking a half marathon 4 days after my wife’s due date!
Ps if I can’t run on the day, I hope you’d want to donate anyway, but I will try to do the course another day.