As many of you may know (and are probably quite sick of me talking about - so apologies), I ran the London Marathon on 26th April 2015 in a time of 5h 4m 55s.

I had set myself a very personal challenge for this year's VLM. I completed Paris marathon last April, but I improved on this by 1 hour and 6 minutes. I trained for this for 6 months, which is a really long time becoming more and more obsessed with running, let me tell you.

I ran to raise awareness for the National Literacy Trust which is an amazing charity helping children and adults throughout the UK who have missed out on learning to read and write, which obviously has a huge impact on their lives. This affects every one in six people in the UK, meaning they are unable to finish school, get jobs or inevitably help their children once they go to school continuing the cycle of illiteracy. 

Working in children's publishing, I was lucky enough to grow up with a passion for reading which has become my career - but not everyone is as fortunate. For more information on this worthwhile charity have a look at their website; http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/about.

On that note, I now ask that you dig deep to sponsor me for these (inevitably very painful) 26.2 miles and make the last 6 months count. Every penny or pound can make a difference!

Thank you to everyone who has already donated and to anyone who is about to!

Nicola x