Inequity in school funding across Wales means that Schools in the Vale of Glamorgan receive hundreds of pounds a year less per pupil than Schools just across the border in Cardiff. The work of SOAP (the Albert Primary PTA) is vital not just in providing the added extras that bring joy to School, but in providing necessary equipment and facilities that allow the School to succeed for our children.

In late 2023, while watching the Cardiff Half participants make their way through Penarth, and while suffering with a serious case of FOMO owing to my injured ankle, I made the mistake of suggesting to Lisa that it would be good to get a team together to enter the half marathon and raise some funds for the PTA. Sadly for me she thought this was an excellent idea, and being the awesome PTA chairwoman that she is, swiftly rounded up a few likely volunteers/conscripts and booked us all in to run, on the understanding that we'd raise vast sums of cash for the School.

Cardiff Half is a special race for me - it is the race that got me back into running seriously in 2019 when I ran it to raise money for cancer research, after Mum was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Mum passed away on the morning of the half marathon that year, and in the times I've run it since it has been her memory that has got me round the course. It is an event that will be forever linked to her in my mind, and while that makes it difficult to take part in, it also makes it an event that I will come back to time and again.

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