Hi,
First of all I just want to say thanks for taking the time to visit my blog, hopefully you'll find it interesting and entertaining.
In case you are reading this and don't know the full story allow me to provide the back story to this challenge. My big sister, Jo, sadly passed away in August 2008 following an accident whilst she was traveling back from Beijing, where she'd been to watch the Olympic Games. In her honour and memory Jo's family and friends set up The Joanna Brown Trust, a charity that aims to encourage involvement in sport. More detail about The JB Trust can be found on our website www.TheJoannaBrownTrust.org.
At the time of Jo's death she was in training for the New York Marathon, which she was set to run in November of that year. In memory of Jo and in aid of The Joanna Brown Trust I'm going to run the New York Marathon in 2012. Having never done any kind of running like this before and not being a particularly big fan of running I know I'm in for a very challenge and tough 18 months. Needless to say the reason why I am doing it will be more than enough motivation to get me through the difficult times ahead and I can't even begin to imagine what it will feel like to cross that finish line.
As well as doing this for Jo and trying to raise as much money as possible for The JB Trust, my other aim is to raise the awareness about the charity. Being such a small charity any help or support we receive makes a massive difference. I know that's a line used by a lot of charities but as this charity is effectively one man and a laptop it is true! I am so grateful to the organisations that have already agreed to support my challenge.
Nuffield Health have provided me with a free membership so I can train in their gym and have full access to all the other fantastic facilities and services they offer. The second sponsor is Adidas who have very kindly agreed to provide me with trainers and running tops for my training and on the day itself.
Training has already official begun, I've recruited the help of my friend 'Hoops' to help me along the way. So far it going well, getting the support from Nuffield Health and Adidas has really given me an extra bit of motivation. The key at the moment is to just take it one step at a time and not think about the marathon itself.
Over the coming months I'll be posting how I'm getting on and any other major developments. It'll be roughly one a month unless something radical happens. I'm going down to Runaround Sports in Worcester early next week to be videoed on a running machine to see what type of trainers I need.
Think that's it for the first entry, please keep checking back for more entries and I'd really appreciate it if you could forward this on. As I said it's all about spreading the word...
Cheers,
Rich
