My Story

Royal Springboard offers life-changing educational opportunities to highly motivated young people from challenging backgrounds. Over the last ten years I have been privileged to work alongside numerous 'Springboarders' in the classroom and want to do something more to contribute to the work of this exceptional social-mobility charity.

As some of you will recall, I was 90% through a fairly rigorous training programme for the 2020 London Marathon when it was cancelled just a few weeks before race day due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

- For those who were kind enough to sponsor me in the run-up to that event, again, thank you so much.

- If anyone were to feel that a second batch of marathon training deserved a second donation (he impishly remarked), there are no rules against high generosity here.

- If you've simply forgotten that you sponsored me last time, do go ahead and donate (again).

- If you weren't persuaded last time, maybe the fact I started training for this on 35-year-old knees and will be running it on closer to a 40-year-old spec will be the clincher?

My training plan this year is complicated by the fact that I will be in Italy for much of August, so expect some blistering runs (meteorologically, not metaphorically). I shall try to share updates via 'Strava'. If you want to 'follow' me there, you'll see I'm a few weeks into my 'official' 12 week training plan, and have been building up the miles since January, before which I was seeing a physio about my patella tendinitis issues. Like I said, aging knees.

Thanks again to the Mercers' Company, which has generously offered to match the donations I receive for this endeavour. In other words, it's 2-for-1 time - not to mention the gift aid option.