Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

My name is Jackie and I'm a chocoholic. Hence the reason that when we moved to the New Forest in 2013 my weight had crept steadily up to 12 stone! Although I had an active lifestyle looking after our lovely animal family, I didn't do any actual exercise. A friend of mine persuaded me to join the novices group at a local running club in April 2014, which I did with much trepidation, expecting to be laughed at for being an overweight, unfit 47 year old!  How wrong I was. There were such a wide range of shapes, sizes and ages who were a real inspiration and I just blended in and puffed away, eventually completing my first 5 mile race in July 2014. 

I am not, nor will ever be a 'natural' runner. I never find running easy and if it wasn't for the great bunch of friends I made at our running club I would never have kept going. This will unquestionably be the hardest thing I have ever done, but I intend to give it everything I have got to try and achieve a decent time (I'm secretly hoping for under 4hrs.30 but this could well be 6hrs.30!!) To date the furthest races I have run are two half Marathons, the fastest time being 2.08. I always vowed that I would never run a Marathon as the thought of running 26.2 miles seemed as achievable as flying to the moon.

Well here I am at age 52 (and a half!), weighing in at 10 stone *edit* 9 stone 6lb, the training has helped :-), training hard five times a week and following the advice of my seasoned Marathon runner friend Jo who is helping me to run the best I can. I started training in November so that I would have a solid 10 miles under my belt for the start of the 16 week training plan and so far training is going well.

I have chosen to run for Celia Hammond Animal Trust as I wanted every penny I could raise to go directly towards helping animals who need help. Animals are a huge part of my life and it is an honour to be able to do something that will be so incredibly hard knowing that it is going to make a difference to many cats lives. Please have a read of their website, they genuinely do so much and are a real inspiration to help me keep going when the training get tough.

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