Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

You may not know me, and even if you do you may not know why on earth I’m doing the New York marathon in November 2012. Truth be told I’m not quite sure either. The reality is that a friend said that if they lost a certain amount of weight they would do the marathon and I said ‘sure I’ll do it with you’. I’m not quite sure why I said this, but I may have been thinking one of three things: i) I had full confidence in my friend and was relishing the challenge of a marathon; ii) I never believed that the spoken word would actually become reality; or iii) I just said ‘yeah sure’ without really giving it much thought at all. In a strange way in think all three may have been true if that’s possible.

Given I’ve already let the cat out of the bag and you’ve known from line one that I’m doing the marathon, I’m sure you’ve worked out that said friend did indeed hit their target weight loss, and not one to renege on my word I wasn’t going to not do the marathon (apologies for the double negative!). Besides it was another chance to go to New York so how could I resist, right?

Perhaps I was naive as I don’t think I ever gave any consideration to how much this endeavour was going to take over my life. You see it’s not just about running / jogging / walking / limping my way around 26.2 miles on a cold / warm / who knows November day in New York – it’s about the hundreds of miles and hundreds of hours spent training, the pulled muscles, the blistered toes, and worst of all the resultant bad hair!

But, if everything goes to plan, the reality is that on 4th November I’ll be wending my way around the five boroughs of New York powered only by my little white Irish legs.

And to make me feel a bit better about all the time and pain from this, I’m raising money for two very worthy charities:

1) Any money donated through this JustGiving page will go to The Alzheimer’s Society which is dedicated to defeating dementia through research into the cause, cure, care and prevention of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, to improve treatment for people today, and search for a cure for tomorrow.

2) Money collected through other routes will be split between The Alzheimer’s Society and the Southern Area Hospice Services which provides free support and care to people in the area who are suffering from cancer, multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease and AIDS.

By the way...you’re not paying for me to go on holiday! 100% of money raised goes directly to the charities. So if you’ve enjoyed my little verbal ramble or you think my endeavour is worthwhile please donate, and don’t forget to Gift Aid it!

Now for the smallprint...

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity. So please dig deep and donate now.