At the end of last year, I won a competition for 6 months triathlon training.  An initial email from the coaching team asked about my race plans.  I didn't have any.  Consequently I have signed up for three triathlons; the Southampton Fast Twitch Tri in April, the Fareham Tri in May, and the Guildford Tri in July.  Although a keen cyclist, and, more recently, a regular runner, I have never done anything like this before.  To keep me focused during this lunacy, I thought I would try to raise some money for Footsteps 4 Oliver (Oliver Osborne).  Oliver is a boy in Ruby's class, who was diagnosed with Spastic Diplegic Cerebral Palsy.  This is his story, in his mum's words:

"Oliver was born on January 19th 2011, he was 3 months early and weighed 2lb 12ozs. He was in QAH for 7 1/2 weeks after he was born and when he was discharged suffered months of bronchiolitis and reflux.

As he got older we realised he wasn’t reaching the milestones that he should do.. at the age of one all he could do was lie on his back, he couldn’t roll over or kick his legs let alone sitting. We had to fight for anyone to take any notice of our concerns but at the age of 15 months our world fell apart (or so we thought at the time) when Oliver was diagnosed with Spastic Diplegic Cerebral Palsy and we were told he would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. The type of cerebral palsy he has meant that his legs were constantly going into muscle spasms, were stuck together so we literally had to prise them apart and he couldn’t bend them at all. It also effects his trunk control, balance and fine motor control.

After some research we found out about an operation called SDR - Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy. Unfortunately it wasn’t funded by the NHS, so we had to travel out to the US or the subsequent physiotherapy of which he needed at least 5-6 hours a week. The operation SDR was life changing, the surgeon basically removes a vertebrae and then probes all of the tiny fibres that make up your spinal cord, work out which ones are causing spasticity and sever them! This takes away the spasticity but means that their bodies are weaker so they have to work really hard to break habits and retrain the body. We literally spent our entire time both before and after the operation running to physio, hydrotherapy, horse riding to name but a few.

In February 2017 we returned to St Louis for another operation, this was for Oliver’s heel cords to be lengthened so he can now place his feet flat on the ground rather than walking on tiptoes. This has improved both his balance and walking. We have spent just over 8 weeks in St Louis for both of the ops and we have to fund it all ourselves.

Before the operations Oliver could barely walk with a walker but now he can walk comfortably with quad sticks and is doing well with walking sticks. He’s so nearly there with his walking. The surgeons in the states have predicted that he will be able to walk independently one day, however he still has a lot of hard work before he achieves this... none of which is funded by the NHS. This is why we desperately need more funds."

Please help me to help Oliver, and his family.