Thank you for taking the time to visit my page. I have been given the amazing opportunity of running the London marathon for Activity Alliance. I have a basis of fitness for running after doing halfs in the past, but this is going to be a huge challenge and something I am looking forward to.

Running has become a big part of my life, in fact if you ask my wife it is my life. There was a time when this wasn’t the case, I always use to stay active playing football once or twice a week but nothing that was particularly out of the ordinary and I was happy being as I was and didn’t really question what I was doing. I always restricted myself due to being a diabetic, a healthy lifestyle is a must when you are a diabetic but also the complications of trying to control levels while doing exercise, so was always put off doing anything extra just to avoid added hard work of making sure levels where ok.

This all changed In August 2014 my wife and I got married. We were happier than we have ever been, and to make things even better we found out that she was pregnant with our first child. We were excited and nervous that two of the biggest chapters of our life had happened at the same time but looking forward to what the future held. This was until our 12-week scan, we were told the devastating news that there was an issue with the baby, and that we would have to induce a miscarriage as our baby wouldn't see the full term. Pure excitement turnt to despair and words cannot describe how we were both feeling. October 15th, we had to go into hospital to induce a miscarriage, I can't begin to tell you how helpless that feels. I speak for myself and Chan when I say that was the worst 24 hours of our life. We had to say goodbye to our first baby girl before we had even got the chance to say hello. We have named her Belle, unofficially but it helped. For weeks afterwards, we struggled to come to terms with our loss. Yes, our family and friends supported is amazingly, however we knew they were hurting as well. Some people didn't know how to act around us, and some shunned us through fear of not knowing what to say such is the extent of taboo around miscarriage.

This is when I started running, I used the running as an escape. It was a difficult time dealing with everything that come with the miscarriage of a child and I find running helped me process my emotions. A charity called miscarriage Association also helped, we were given the details by the hospital about the charity and I personally used the website for a lot of comfort.

This lead to me running the Reading half marathon in March 2015 in aid of the miscarriage association and raising £235. The original plan was to run 6 half marathons that year, but injury within the Reading half marathon put pay to that.

The running bug soon took hold and I found I wanted to raise money for people and by running I was able to raise money by doing something I loved.

I heard about Sands through the situation above and in 2017 I ran the half marathons in Swindon and Bristol and raised a further £413 for charity. Again, this helped me come to terms with everything around the miscarriage and it felt good doing something for a charity which meant a lot to me.

Doing these big challenges has led me to take on the next one. The London Marathon 2019. I will be doing this in aid of Activity Alliance. They support organisations to support individual disabled people to be active and stay active for life. The training begun in January 2019 and working my way through training plan. As of February, I have run about 150 miles and put many of hours training in. This has been hard to balance and keep my diabetes well managed. On top of this, normal recovery foods for runs are quite hard to come by as I suffer my Coeliac disease which means I cannot eat wheat.

However, I am determined to keep going. Running has been a great release for me and raising money for charities is a massive bonus and something I enjoy doing and hope to continue to do. Running has helped me control my diabetes better and be more aware of my condition. It keeps my weight well managed and keeps me healthy which all contribute to a healthy lifestyle.

Running for Activity Alliance is an honour and I am happy to raise as much money as possible for such a great charity and cause.

I would like to thank the companies who have so far supported my fundraising raffle which I am doing and the supporting quiz on the 28 March 2019.

Any donations either monetary or raffle donations would be extremely welcome and appreciated. For more information about Activity Alliance please visit, www.activityalliance.org.uk