Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

As many of you will know, I am running the 2012 London Marathon in April. This was a crazy idea I had last year....I didn't tell anyone about it at the time because I knew there was a big chance it would come to fruition.

For those that know me, you will probably ask 'why'? Some will still not be convinced that I will actually do it, but I am going to make it to the end....I am very determined. So why did I decide to do this? Well the main reason for me is that I wanted to do something in memory of my Gran, who was a very special lady and who passed away after a long and slow deterioration in her health after suffering from Alzheimers for many years.

My Grandad had died several years earlier and he had a massive send off. He was quite well known in the local area from being an elder in the local church and he also had many contacts from having quite an important job for the famous Dundee publishers "DC Thomson". The church was packed full for his funeral and it was quite fitting for the occasion.

By contrast when my Gran died in 2009 her send off was very simple. It was in a small room in a funeral home. There were a few reasons for this. Partly because she had outlived many of her family  and friends. Also rather than being actively involved in the local community as she was before Grandad's death she had lived in 3 different care homes since his death. So it was really a small family affair and not the grand occasion that in some ways I thought she deserved. Her death in itself did not really result in a traditional grieving process, which actually I think is one of the hardest things about Alzheimer's as the process is slow and it feels like you slowly lose the person with the disease over a period of years. In the latter few years of her life I really didn't like going to visit her and when I did it didn't even feel like I was seeing her. It was her body I was seeing, but the vibrant, soulful, hilarious and warm-hearted woman I once knew was no longer there. Because of that, when she did die I think for a lot of the family it was more of a sense of relief than anything. Certainly for me personally I felt like we had lost her a long time ago so it was a strange feeling going to the funeral when she had just died.

It's hard to describe my Gran to anyone who didn't know her. I'm sure those of you who did meet her would know what a special person she was. If I could say one thing about her it would be that she loved people and she loved to make people happy. She was a faithful housewife to my Grandad for many years and apart from the odd game of golf, her routine didn't really venture much out of shopping for hours in the local supermarket (which consisted of hunting for reduced items and stopping in each ailse for long conversations with people that she knew). She liked talking to people, no matter who they were. I remember one occasion her recounting a conversation she had had with a punk rocker she had stopped in the town. I also remember her telling us about her shopping habits, including a search for a tin opener which involved looking round about 10 shops so that she could save a few pence on the price.

Despite her penny-pinching habits, 'stingy' is definitely not a word you could use to describe her. I think the bargain hunting did come from her past, growing up in a really poor family and also through the war....but despite being careful with her money when it came to buying things for herself, she was very generous when it came to the family. My Grandad had a very good job and they were pretty well-off....he gave her housekeeping money but rather than spending it all she would stash money away somewhere to buy Xmas presents for the family. She was very funny, with a wicked sense of humour. I would say she is one of the people who I have admired most in life and who has had a lot of impact on me, so running the marathon and raising some money for Alzheimers in the process, seems a fitting way of paying tribute to her.

Any contributions you can make are welcome!