Hi, my name is Rich and I was diagnosed with heart failure in August 2016.  After feeling breathless and tired all the time and not being able to walk more than 20ft without needing to sit down, I was admitted to hospital with huge fluid overload and going through multiple organ failure.  I was in the Leeds General Infirmary for 4 weeks, having lots of tests and put on various medications including diuretics which led to me losing over 20 kilos in weight in excess fluid.

Once out of hospital I made serious changes to my lifestyle including taking up running and competed in my first 5K park run in April 2017.   Since then, I have run two 10K races and rediscovered my love of hiking, including a hike up Mount Snowdon in September 2018.

My 2019 fundraising is going to last the whole year this time, and will involve taking part on different hiking and running events.  This time I'm going big with the aim to run and walk 1000 miles over the course of the year.

The big event for the year is completing the 192mile Coast to Coast walk from St Bees in the Lake District over to Robin Hoods Bay on the Yorkshire coast.  This will be taking place over 15 days at the end of May/beginning of June.

The core activities and strategy of the Pumping Marvellous Foundation are driven by the needs of heart failure patients, carers and family communities we serve. We get to the real crux of the problems, the problems that patients tell us they have. Our communities are large and we have superb interactions with them, we run the largest Facebook page dedicated to Heart Failure globally so we fully understand the needs and challenges they face. We develop and distribute patient information to the vast majority of NHS Heart Failure Teams in the UK.