So why am I doing this for charity? Well, take a seat & strap in...

When I was 7, I lived in Dublin & my dad noticed me limping. All the time. He was a doctor and saw something was up. I was diagnosed with Legg-Calve-Perthes disease. A non contagious and not-thought to-be-hereditary hip condition. It meant my hip (and thus leg) stopped growing. I had to have my leg strapped up and was on crutches permanently.

Not much is known about this condition even to this day - it affects about 1 in 10,000 people - and usually cures itself in 2-5 years but can lead to permanent disability. A couple of years on crutches?

Shortly after my diagnosis, we moved to England and there was an orthopaedic surgeon locally who was actually researching this condition. I was taken on kind of as a guinea-pig to see if there were better ways to treat it than 'just let it be'; and in my first summer in England, not long after moving there my hip was operated on - cutting the femur, rotating the head into the hip socket & bolting it all back together. And then a couple of months later, opening my leg back up & removing the plate. I'm fine now, but I can't cross my legs...small things...

So - my first few months in a new country as a child on crutches with a foreign accent was spent largely in hospital. Luckily my primary school's head teacher was a caring and understanding man; he was great (Mr Thorpe if anyone reading this went to school with me then), with foresight he assigned other kids to take me under their wings and all this time later I'm still friends with them.

And then after this, after the operations, I had to learn to walk again as my left leg was like a string. That took more months but all the time I remained active; I was as fast as anyone around at my age on 2 - or 3 legs, with the crutches... 

Yet despite this, and maybe because of it, I'm a runner. And a pretty good one - usually placing in the top 2-4% of the field in NYRR races in New York where the races are highly competitive and the standard of runner extremely high and with a handful of top 3 placings in my age group over the last few years. 

I got a second chance so I feel it's my duty to those who haven't been as fortunate as I have been. This is why I have an empathy and a drawing to an orthopaedic charity. I've been inside the system and want to help those others who need it.

London will be my 6th marathon, and my 5th major. Only about 8,000 people had completed all 6 majors by the end of 2022 so you can understand it's an achievement I want to share in. 

I chose the following charity for these reasons, above and below.

The Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is a centre of excellence for the treatment of orthopaedics. The RJAH Charity aims to support patients and their relatives at times of need by the provision of services, equipment and facilities.