I’ve set myself a “3PB Challenge”: I’ll be having a shot at achieving new personal best times at 10K, half and full marathon distances, all within 6 weeks during October and November this year. I hope I’ll achieve one of these targets. Two would be great. While all three feels like an impossible dream right now! To attempt this challenge, I’ll be participating in the Virtual London Marathon (3 Oct); the Cambridge Half Marathon (17 Oct); and the George Munday 10K in Leverington, Cambs (14 Nov).

I thought a challenge like this could be harnessed to help a good cause, so I’ve chosen to fundraise for Cambridge Global Health Partnerships (CGHP). CGHP operates as part of Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (ACT). Established in 2007, CGHP is a remarkable charitable programme that works to establish global health partnerships across Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Health partnerships are long term links between health organisations. Based on the needs of the low/middle-income country partner, they design and deliver training and support for healthcare workers. Their work has a huge positive impact, delivering healthcare benefits to millions of patients. The health partnerships CGHP helps establish are crucial to patients’ lives, both in the UK and overseas.

However, recent cuts to UK foreign aid funding have left a devastating funding gap. No funding means no training and no knowledge sharing. At every moment, lives can be lost.

For example, one of CGHP’s many projects involves reducing the mortality rate of mothers in Uganda, who are 54 times more likely to die from birth complications than in the UK. A CGHP group of volunteer health professionals has been working with clinical teams in Uganda to find solutions to save lives. Together, they are developing new guidelines for the care of mothers during and after birth.

But this partnership has lost funding, so please donate to CGHP today by sponsoring me in my 3PB Challenge. Any money we raise will help CGHP continue its vital work, not only in Uganda but in many other countries where their involvement is helping to save countless lives. Read about CGHP’s projects in Botswana, El Salvador, Myanmar, Kenya and more on their website: https://cambridgeghp.org

The CGHP team in Cambridge is dedicated to sharing healthcare expertise worldwide safely, effectively and ethically. By the end of 2018, CGHP had helped over 600 volunteers from UK health services to give more than 10,000 days of support to hospitals and healthcare services in over 50 countries, and to train over 3,000 healthcare workers.

About me: I’ve been a runner for decades, and like most runners I get a little obsessed by PBs. That relentless drive to achieve new personal milestones is a big part of the motivation that keeps us putting on our running shoes and heading out to pound the streets. I’ve pored over running magazines, followed multiple training plans, fine-tuned my diet, adopted frankly painful injury-prevention techniques, and generally learned to train a bit smarter. All of which has helped me whittle away a few minutes and seconds here and there. But for me, more substantial improvement has remained elusive. Then three things happened…

Someone suggested that I was now too old to set a “good time” in a running event. I laughed off the comment, but deep down I resolved to prove them wrong. Secondly, a year or so later, a running friend introduced me to the Tanda method: a marathon performance predictive formula. I just loved the idea… no more guesswork about how far you need to run, how often or how hard. Simply take the time you want to achieve, then track back to find the number of miles you need to run per week and the average pace you needed to hit.

The third thing was the pandemic. As activities and events were cancelled, and work became more flexible, I was able to dedicate more time to running. The first part of this was encouraging running in our local community. I wanted to help people stay fit and to create a sort of virtual running community - a way distant socialising as the UK locked down. I did this by setting up the Coton Challenge: a local running and walking challenge that enabled the gentlest amblers to compete with even the fastest sprinters. I’m also training to be a running coach - I’ve started a Leadership in Running Fitness course and helped organise two weekly running sessions. But I thought I couldn’t hope to encourage others to run without trying to become a better runner myself, hence this 3 PB Challenge!