At the beginning of 2020 my pal Ewen Lamont and I were planning on running 2 marathons. We started our training after Christmas, and everything was going to plan, with PBs each at the Inverness half marathon in March. Then the 'Rona hit, and everything changed.

All our marathons were cancelled, my work in the COVID unit meant my training dropped off in the second half of March, then on April 13th I was diagnosed with COVID. My fitness fell away completely. When I tried to jog in May, I had to stop after 5 minutes because my heart rate was at 120%, and I felt very dizzy. My post COVID symptoms lasted between 8 and 10 weeks, and are mostly gone now, and I'm back enjoying running and cycling.

Though the Boston marathon has been cancelled, the BAAA have offered people who were entered the opportunity to run the marathon in a virtual way - run 26.2 miles on the day, upload the data, get the medal. So I'm entered, and going to give it a go - September 13th, exactly 5 months after my COVID diagnosis.

The route is round the Carse of Gowrie, which means it's going to be lumpy. And Ewen is going to do it with me!

Here's the question - would you like to join in? Would you like to run with us for 5k? 10k? HM? We'd love to have some company - it's all completely outdoors and we'll be keeping good social distancing throughout, complying with current recommendations. Having someone along with us will really help with the motivation, and distract us from the sore legs as we get round the course. Whether you're quick or not-so-quick, if we could get people running the course at the same time, that would be a really great - if you can run along with us, that's great too!

If you would like to support us in our marathon effort, please consider sponsoring me to complete the event: The ARCHIE foundation is a charity that means a lot to me, they support healthcare for children in the North of Scotland, including the refurbishment of the paediatric theatres in Ninewells in Dundee. I was part of the team of folk who climbed all the "Archies" (The mountains in Scotland over 1000m in height, or the metric Munros) in 14 days back in 2014; I rode with Mark Beaumont from Dundee to Aviemore to Aberdeen in 2 days in 2019, I ran the New York Marathon for them in 2018; but this year we've not been able to do anything - hopefully we can raise a few quid for them by doing this?

If you'd like to be involved - run with us, help with 'feed stations', cycle along with us, help with training, just let me know.

-Tom Fardon