Thanks for taking the time to visit this donations page ...

Wow - now that's a run I might do again next year!  I'm delighted to let you know that I managed to record a time of 1 hr 44 mins which was inside the challenge I set myself and better than I thought I could manage!  What a wonderful run though - loads of supporters (there were 15,000 runners!) and a great atmosphere, easy to get to and from and plenty to see (even a farmer's market - wonderful sausages) and loads of free stuff - I may never need to buy another cereal bar in my life!  For my "race telemetry" check out this page.

As you'll be aware, I undertook a challenge to run two half marathons in two weeks - this was the second (the first was the Windsor Half Marathon on 27 September at which I raised money for the Everyman Campaign which raises funds to fight the "male" cancers - testicular and prostate cancer - click here to see my fundraising page for that one).

Remember: I will be asking Citi to "match" donations for this run - the way things work here is that Citi will match 30% of payments up to a certain total meaning that if a very generous person was to give £50 (to keep the numbers sensible!) the charity would receive:

              £50 donation, plus £14.10 in recovered tax plus £15 in Citi matching totalling £79.10!

Bear in mind that if that person was a 40% rate tax payer they could reclaim £20 in tax and it would cost £30 for the charity to receive £79.10 - amazing!

The Windsor run was crazy - a warm day in blazing sunshine and an incredibly hilly course.  It was amazing to see so many of my fellow runners collapsed at the side of the course receiving medical attention - quite remarkable for a half marathon, I suspect ...  Anyway, that was completed in 1 hr 54 mins 07 sec and so that will be my benchmark for the Royal Parks!  Photos of the aftermath can be found here ...

This run, however, is my effort to do something to thwart dementia.  Dementia is not an integral part of aging – it's a number of diseases, including Alzheimer's. There are over 100 types of dementia and the Alzheimer's Society is committed to defeating them all through research. Their programme has three themes - cause, cure and care. The search for cause and cure gives hope for the future, while research on care ensures that they deliver the best help for the 700,000 people in the UK who have dementia in the present.

Please do consider giving what you can to fight dementia.  It's something which can strike at any of us, or any of our loved ones and should be curable - all we need to do is care enough to find the solution.