Our good friends Tom and Hollie Mahood lost their baby son Rory in October.

Touched deeply by the death of Rory and Hollie and Tom's loss we wanted to do something to show our support and try to make a difference so we came up with the idea of "Run for Rory's Hope".

On March 28th my son Max & I are attempting to run the Wherrymans Way - a 35 mile route from Gt Yarmouth to Norwich in aid of Rory's Hope.

Here's the only things you need to know about us:

Neither of us have ever run more than 10k - we're not runners by any stretch of the imagination.

I turn 50 this year and Max is 19

The most important thing to us is Tom & Hollie's story - please take the time to keep reading and understand why we're taking this on.

"Our son Rory died in the early hours of October 15, 2023. He was four months’ old.

For those few weeks of his precious life, he was a healthy happy baby, developing well and then suddenly, without warning, he was taken from us.

We were catapulted into the world of baby loss, and one where there seemed to be barely any explanations or answers. We found that hard to believe…and we are not prepared to accept that.

We wanted Rory’s life to be important, and his death to be important too.

And we want to try to make sure that SIDS is not just something parents must accept. We believe it is preventable and that there must be an answer out there.

It was while working through my grief as his heartbroken mother that I came across the work of Dr Carmel Harrington in Australia.

Her team at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney have identified Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) as the first biochemical marker that could help detect babies more at risk of SIDS while they are alive.

That is an important breakthrough.

The study by Dr Harrington, who lost her own child to SIDS three decades ago, found BChE levels were significantly lower in babies who subsequently died of SIDS compared to other infant deaths.

This may hold the key to screening for babies vulnerable to SIDS and help tackle the devastating heartbreak faced every year by thousands of parents.

In Rory’s memory, we aim to partner with Dr Harrington – along with a number of other organisations globally – to raise funds to advance her research and develop a test that identifies SIDS susceptible babies.

This is the goal of Rory’s Hope."

The training is going to be tough - in fact this is the most difficult aspect of this challenge and the risks of getting injured are very real (especially for the old boy!).

But this nothing compared to what Hollie and Tom are going through.

This is a cause important to us and worth the effort so any support means the world.