Thank you for visiting my JustGiving page.

For quite a while I have had a very distant dream of running the  
London Marathon. Although I am still many years away of doing this I  
decided that now would be a good time for me to act on it. I thought  
that there was no better way for me to do this than to run the Bath  
Half Marathon.

I am sure many of you are wondering how I am ever going to do this, as  
from what you all probably remember I was never the most sporty or  
athletic of people. However, I tried to change this so took up running  
in January 2009, although it was more of a slow jog at the time. Since  
then I have been getting better, so thought I would set myself a  
challenge and run a half marathon. I originally wanted to complete  
this in two and a half hours. However, from much persuasion and  
encouragement from friends, I have reduced this time to two hours. I  
am currently running 11 miles in just under two hours, so I am hoping  
that with a bit more training and the atmosphere on the day that I  
will be able to meet my target.

Although I am doing this for my own personal achievement, I thought  
that it would be a fantastic opportunity to raise money of charity.  
So, I decided on a charity that was close to me and too many of you,  
Meningitis UK. Meningitis UK solely focuses on prevention and funding  
lifesaving research to eradicate all forms of meningitis. The disease  
can strike at an incredible speed and it can kill in less than four  
hours. It is incredibly difficult to detect as its symptoms are  
similar to a cold and flu, so raising awareness is one of their main  
priorities. Meningitis affects thousands of people in the UK every  
year and devastates families and whole communities, so developing a  
vaccine will make a huge difference to countless lives.

As many of you know, I (and I expect many of you reading this) lost  
Sundeep Watts to meningitis on the 12th November 2007, a day after his  
19th birthday. Deep was truly an inspiration to all of us and by no  
doubt one of the nicest people you would have ever met. Unfortunately,  
many of us were unable to say goodbye to him and tell him how much we  
appreciated his silly jokes and outrageous fancy dress outfits.  
However, if it had been caught sooner we never know what may have  
happened.

For these reasons please donate as much as you can to help prevent  
this disease from destroying other people?s lives!

Thank you very much for reading my story and if any of you are free  
the half marathon is on Sunday 7th March 2010, all support is welcome :)

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