On Sunday 21st April I will be running the London Marathon, hoping to raise at least £4,000 for the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital. I am running in memory of Luke Holland, a close friend who passed away in 2015 but who would have celebrated his 40th birthday this April.

Luke and I met during our first weekend at university, we quickly became great friends and then lived together for several years as we began our careers in London. He was a generous and loyal friend, great fun to be around (the three photos above are from a 2012 trip to Australia and New Zealand) and had a bright future ahead of him.

In September 2015, Luke was shot and killed in a random attack whilst on his way home from a night out with friends in Berlin. He had moved to Germany to pursue a career in tech start-ups, after having left City law and done an MBA. He was 31 years old and is missed hugely still by his friends and family (Luke was survived by his mum Rita - who is sadly no longer with us - and dad Phil).

I'm fairly sure that if Luke were alive we would not have celebrated his 40th by running the London Marathon together (or anything of the sort) but I wanted to take on a personal challenge to mark my friend's milestone birthday and to raise funds for a wonderful charity based in the home city he loved.

The RMCH was an obvious choice - it's the UK's largest children's hospital (with 371 paediatric beds and 60 neonatal cots) and supports 280,000 children every year. Here are a few links in case you would like to read more about some of the children the RMCH has supported:

https://mftcharity.org.uk/charlie-drinkwater/

https://mftcharity.org.uk/hughie-freddie/

https://mftcharity.org.uk/ava-leblanc/

Thank you for reading this far and a huge thank you in advance for any donations, no matter how big or small. I have previously run two marathons (10 years ago, both very slowly and in pain...) but am not a natural long-distance runner and so any donations will really help motivate me to get through my training runs, overcome the various injuries (which have already started, sadly!) and, fingers crossed, make it to the finish line in April...

Ollie