Myself and my dad Cos have made the crazy decision to run the New York City Marathon on Sunday 3rd November. We originally intended to complete the half marathon (or even a 10km!) as I personally have  absolutely no experience in long distance running, besides the 800m on sports day at school; while my dad has three marathon's currently under his belt (the Edinburgh and Athens Marathon's in May and November 2017 respectively as well Cyprus in March 2019).

However, through my naivety and laziness in research, I desperately wanted our New York trip to precede my Walt Disney World venture (already booked) with my cousin and friends from the 8th November to the 23rd. And seeing that the New York Marathon ran the weekend before I thought I'd conveniently book my Dad's and my own flight for that weekend, and then the weekend after journey down to Orlando, Florida while my Dad caught his flight back to the UK. 

Just as I thought everything was falling into place, it came to my knowledge that the TCS New York City Marathon solely 'runs' the full marathon over that particular weekend (due to it being the largest and most popular marathon in the world with over 50,000 runners each year!) whilst the half marathon didn't take place until the following week - when I would have been in Disney World!!!

So with 2 months until our departure we had the decision of whether to run the full marathon or pretty much just enjoy a week in the Big Apple
(for both our 1st times) immediately before my Disney World trip.

But where's the fun in that, when you could be exploring one of the greatest cities in the world, for the first time, whilst running the biggest marathon in the world AND for a fantastic cause. So from that moment we were committed to 2 months of gruelling training to equip our bodies for 42km of running across New York's 5 major boroughs, beginning in Statton Island, through Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and finally ending up in Central Park, Manhattan. I at least would be putting my body through something I've never done before and will undoubtedly make me look back at my Mt Kilimanjaro experience of 2016 and laugh! But hopefully with the completion of this physical AND mental challenge we'll be bringing awareness and support to a fantastic cause and an amazing young lady, Nikki Christou.

Nikki is just 15 and suffers from a very rare condition called an AVM ( Arterio-Vascular malformation) and has had over 80 operations since she was 6! Despite her health issues, she founded The Butterfly AVM Charity to help raise awareness for her condition, support sufferers and their families and raise funding for vital research currently taking place at Great Ormond Street Hospital and the UCL.

Please help us to continue to raise awareness and much needed funding for research. We thank you in advance for your kind and generous support.

Adam and Costas Adamou