Following an 'exciting' foray into American emergency healthcare in Baltimore on Choir Tour, I signed mother and I up to do the triathlon for the Anaphylaxis Campaign. This experience made me realise how low awareness of anaphlyaxis still is (my conductor, for example, asking the paramedics if I'd be able to sing in the concert in a couple of hours!). 3 in 50 people now suffer with some form of food allergy and it is all too easy to trivialise these as middle-class neuroses. The Anaphylaxis Campaign works tirelessly to raise awareness of life-threatening allergies and to support those who have them, working in tandem with other medical charities to see that silly accidents (such as eating unlabelled biscuits...!) need not be fatal.

We're both pretty good swimmers and cyclists but neither of us can run, so a triathlon seemed a great challenge for us, and a sprint (400m swim, 30km cycle and 5k run) is the ideal for getting started.