Firstly thanks for taking the time to view this page, i am running the London Marathon on April 25th 2010 and am trying to raise as much money as i can for my chosen charitys which are the 'National Autistic Society' and 'Sense' which supports and campaigns for children and adults who are deafblind.

On December 4th 2009, about 4 months ago, our world changed forever as that was the day my beautiful baby boy arvind was diagnosed with autism, he is my youngest of two sons and is going to be 3 years old this week.Since that day, our world has totally changed, everything which used to be important, now means hardly anything to me, all i want now is to do everything i can for my son, to make him happy and keep him safe forever.

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He is such a soft boy, and so so cute, somtimes i feel like its just not fair what has happened, but then i just have to tell myself, "this is real life and these things happen" , infact worse things happen, so we just have to do the best we can to help him.

He has just started a intensive one-to-one home based programme, which is run by a fantastic team of good honest people, and we are going to try our best to help my son, because he is young we still have a chance, i have always liked a challenge, and now i have the biggest of my life, the challenge to save my son from autism. If it does not happen, so be it, but we will never stop hoping and fighting to make a difference for him.

The hardest thing for me personally is that my son has never spoke a word yet, but on the day he does, or if he does, i will be the happiest man on this earth, and i mean that. Most autistic children find it very hard to make eye contact, and when my son was young he never responded to me, which broke my heart so bad, he was literally in his own little world but now when i come home from work he sometimes even comes up to me and i pick him up and swing him around and hold his hands so that he can jump up and down, as he just loves jumping.

Sorry to go quite deep, but i think thats enough now and im going to get back onto subject, its just that it can be hard explaining to people how you feel, as everyone has their own worries, and sometimes it can be tiring having the same conversation with different people, but i do actually feel better for writing the above, also alot of people dont really know what autism is, which makes it even harder to talk about, i did not even know myself what autism really was before it entered our life.

Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects the way a person communicates and relates to people around them. People with autism have difficulties with everyday social interaction.' NAS website

The real reason i initially wanted to run the marathon was for the personal experience, at that point my life was nice and norlam, but midway through the training programme Arvind was diagnosed, and literally the next day, i was so upset and generally angry that i went out on a run and went from a best of 6 miles to 13 miles overnight, which i thought was impossible for me , as every week me and my training partner used to only increase the miles by 1 a week. Then as the days went on, i found running really helped me to stay on track, as i had a specific goal and i was determined not to fail, as i said to myself, "if i can actually run this marathon, then i can do anything", and i drummed it into my head that i must complete this marathon and not give up, it somehow felt i was doing this run for Arvind, i dont know why i started to feel that, maybe i needed some serious inspiration , and that was what i clung onto, but it has worked and i now feel better prepared to take on the challenge of autism.

I hope to raise alot of money for this charity and by giving money , you are helping in two ways, as one the money will help the charity and two, the more people i get to sponser me, the more pressure it will put me under to finish the marathon, as when i am feeling really tired and when my body will feel like stoping, probably around the 18 mile mark, then i will remember all the people who have gone out their way to sponser me and that will hopefully give me the extra push i need to finish.



Thanks for taking the time to visit my page- any donation no matter how small will be most gracefully received!!

Gus




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