Mike Harley
Mike's European Marathons
Fundraising for IiME
Story
From May 2015 to March 2022 I ran a marathon in all 27 EU countries to raise awareness and funds for Invest In ME (www.investinme.org) a leading ME research charity.
I hit my target of £42,195 to reflect the 42.195km in a marathon!
For race reports and interviews with ME patients from around the EU please visit: www.mikeseumarathons.eu
#1 - Prague, Czech Rep - May 3rd 2015
#2 - Helsinki, Finland - Aug 15th 2015
#3 - Dublin, Ireland - Oct 26th 2015
#4 - Thessaloniki, Greece - Apr 3rd 2016
#5 - Stockholm, Sweden - Jun 4th 2016
#6 - Gdansk, Poland - Aug 15th 2016
#7 - Brussels, Belgium - Oct 2nd 2016
#8 - Toulouse, France - Oct 23rd 2016
#9 - Barcelona, Spain - Mar 12th 2017
#10 - Luxembourg, Luxembourg - May 27th 2017
#11 - Vilnius, Lithuania - Sept 10th 2017
#12 - Amsterdam, Netherlands - Oct 15th 2017
#13 - Ljubljana, Slovenia - Oct 29th 2017
#14 - Malta, Malta - Feb 25th 2018
#15 - Vienna, Austria - Apr 22nd 2018
#16 - Copenhagen, Denmark - May 13th 2018
#17 - Tallinn, Estonia - Sept 9th 2018
#18 - Sofia, Bulgaria - Oct 14th 2018
#19 - Paphos, Cyprus - Mar 17th 2019
#20 - Bratislava, Slovakia - Apr 7th 2019
#21 - Riga, Latvia - May 19th 2019
#22 - Budapest, Hungary - Sept 29th 2019
#23 - Bucharest, Romania - Oct 13th 2019
#24 - Porto, Portugal - Nov 3rd 2019
#25 - Hamburg, Germany - Sept 12th 2021
#26 - Zagreb, Croatia - Oct 10th 2021
#27 - Rome, Italy - Mar 27th 2022
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From April 2022 I will continue to run marathon races for Invest In ME across Europe, raising money and awareness in each country I visit.
Non-EU Marathons:
June 11th 2022 - Liechtenstein Alpine Marathon✔️
Nov 27th 2022 - Florence Marathon (Italy)✔️
Apr 29th 2023 - Bergen Marathon (Norway)✔️
Oct 29th 2023 - Lucerne Marathon (Switzerland)✔️
Apr 28th 2024 - Belgrade Marathon (Serbia)
Oct 20th 2024 - Tirana Marathon (Albania)
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Over 250,000 people in the UK suffer with the ME and that includes 25,000 children as well as one of my good friends, Ian, who has suffered for over 15 years with the illness. Watching him drift from year to year without improvement is extremely hard to watch, I want to try to do something to stop this.
Invest In ME (www.investinme.org) are committed to raising funds and awareness to find the cause and cure and are a voluntarily run organisation doing some amazing work. They're making progress in working with scientists and researchers to find cures and treatments. They will be opening a specialist centre of excellence for ME where patients can get diagnosis and treatment and have even crowd-funded enough to hold their own clinical trials. They are also funding the PhD's of students investigating the cause and possible treatments of the disease.
ME is an illness with no set recovery time or guarantee of recovery. It is the most common reason for school absence amongst children in the UK. Symptoms include severe pain, fatigue, sickness and cognitive dysfunction and many more. A huge number of people I've met are house bound, tube-fed, bed bound and worse. If you know someone with ME -donating to Invest In ME is how you can help them get better, we need research and we need it now.
Thanks for your support!