WHAT AM I DOING?

Challenge 1 - Raise awareness. Help do this by joining my Strava Club - RunEd 2022 Every Mile Matters. It is through this club that I want to raise awareness and money for MNDA Cardiff & Vale Branch. Once you have joined - every mile or walking-running-cycling that you complete this year, will contribute to the club target of 20,220miles.

Challenge 2 - I am aiming to run every single day and cover 2022 miles during the year. This is no easy feat and much more than I have ever done before. 

I am hoping to keep up the motivation and interest with numerous challenges during the year. Please join the Strava club and start donating your miles, please consider joining me on any of my runs and please consider making a donation to the work that the MNDA do in our communities. 

Diolch yn fawr iawn

WHY AM I DOING THIS?

Movement and Mobility is a blessing, that we should never take for granted. I run everyday, both because I can and also to remind myself of this blessing.

My mum was one of the kindest and most giving people you could wish to meet. She was also fiercely stubborn and remarkably brave. She was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) in December 2016. A cruel and heartbreaking disease that progressively took her ability to walk, took all muscle control and movement below the neck, eroded her dignity and quality of life, took her ability to eat properly and towards the end it took her ability to talk and communicate - it never took her will to fight and stay strong and it never took her ability to smile. My dad cared for her every single day of the last 5 years, doing everything he could to ease her discomfort, care for her deteriorating body and give her as much of a life as possible. He is a nothing short of a superhero. I helplessly watched the most supportive mother anyone could ever wish for, go from active and able to completely incapable of doing anything for herself. She refused to take any pain relief and I cannot recall one time that she truly complained - she was regularly frustrated, she was regularly upset, and quite rightly so. Her time with my dad after his retirement, where they both had plans and would not have wasted one single minute, were gone. Her time with her grandchildren, whom she adored, was cut short and reduced to little more than passive experiences. October brought with it the worst series of events for all of our family and sadly on the last day of October 2021, after bravely battling through several torrid weeks, my mum passed away. Amidst all of the chaos of October, mum and I cried together, we smiled together and we even shared a couple of laughs too. MND is cruel in that it progressively traps an active and able mind inside a useless and unresponsive body. I want to do something to help raise awareness and support those who work to battle MND - I want to share a little of my mum’s story. Not that she would entirely appreciate this, as she was quite the private person. I know each of us has challenges to overcome but I cannot explain how ridiculously  hard these past years have been for my parents and how incredibly proud I will always be of both my mum and my dad for the way they battled through it all, together. ❤️

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

Find out more @

Strava Club - RunEd 2022 Every Mile Matters

Twitter @tjgolding

https://alysongolding.muchloved.com/Fundraising