We are one step closer to the

Great North Run half marathon

John, Katie and Luke are running the Great Manchester Run (10k) on May 21st and (gulp) the Great North Run half marathon (21k) on the 10th of September. That's 31,000 metres of running that is way outside of our comfort zone, and so we have set ourselves a bold target of £1023 - with 23 being Nissans magic brand number .

We have amazed ourselves so far and having completed our first park run in March we successfully dragged ourselves across the line to complete a 10k run at the Manchester great run.

After starting to run in lockdown, running a half marathon has been a goal of ours, so when we were given the opportunity to raise important funds for the Richard Whitehead Foundation, we had to go for it!

Our Progress to date

 My daughter, Katie & I agreed last Christmas to run the Great North Run ’23 half marathon (as it’s a great Nissan Brand story number) having never run before.

 Our first training “run” was on Jan 2nd and consisted of 6 mins of walking and 2 bursts of 2 mins running.

 We had a 9 month training programme where we have dragged ourselves out in the dark, in heavy rain late at night and had many an argument as we battled tiredness or illness after work.

 We have progressed to run 5k Parkruns from march and completed our first 10k run in Manchester in May. Andrew Humberstone was literally holding me up at the end of the race on one of the hottest days of the year and we ran that in 70 mins.

 Last week we finished our final long run in training , running 11 miles after work last week. This included us running for over 2 ½ half hours and crawling home at 10pm in the dark.

 But we are finally ready and excited to run this weekend having run collectively around 1000 miles this year in training.

 We have one more light run this week (a mere 6 miles) and will join nearly 50,000 other runners to raise money for Richard whiteheads inspiration charity in 4 days time.

 Luke McMillan (who has recently joined Nissan) will be joining us also having also helped us run the Manchester 10k.

Please help us to raise money for the Richard Whitehead Foundation, an amazing charity that helps to identify and remove barriers for disabled young people who are facing physical and emotional challenges. To learn more about the charity please click here:

https://www.whitehead.foundation/nissan-possibilities

Thank you in advance for any donations. We will be posting regular updates about our training runs on this page, to keep you up to date on our progress.

John Parslow, Katie Parslow & Luke McMillan

Thanks to Matt Fowler for the photos

Instagram: @mattfowlerphoto

Facebook: @Matt Fowler Photography

Linked In: @Matt Fowler - Photographer - Commercial and Events