Well I am now all set for the 20th September my Fund Raising Pack arrived today, (yippee..) so I am now officially entered in the Great North Run and ready to start on my challenge.

The pack contains everything I need, the only problem I seem to have at the moment is logging on to the JUSTGIVING website. It just won’t load in the browser (anyone else had problems with this). JustGiving offers you the opportunity to set up a webpage so that people can make donations online, I have set up my donation page at www.justgiving.com/fastat50 is seems a little temperamental at the moment, if you do have problems making a donation please keep trying I think it’s just a technical hitch.

JustGiving is a safe way to make a donation online, when you arrive at my page you will see that the money you donate will on this occasion be going to the Breast Cancer Care Charity, please give generously I would love your support, if you have any comments please submit them below.

Although my challenge does not start officially until 2010, there is nothing better but to get started,  as you may have seen in previous post on the blog, my training back to peak fitness commenced back in April. But to prove to my family and friends that I am serious about this challenge I have just entered the Great North Run 2009, this will be a good test run before the real challenge starts next year, it will also help me practice my fund raising skills.

I will be running to raise money for Breast Cancer Care, just waiting for my fund raising pack. Would like also to take this opportunity to thank Harriet Farrow (sporting events assistant), for letting me know all about it and also allocating me a place. I did try to register for the run earlier but found that the ballot had closed.

So here is a message to all you would-be Marathon & Half Marathon Runners, register your interest with charities, subscribe to their Newsletters, they will do their best to help secure you a place.

For those of you who have explored the Blog, or read the About Page, you will know some of the reasons why I started this challenge.

One of those reasons is to raise money for Breast Cancer Care.

Around 46,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, according to figures published, that’s one person every 11 minutes. Around 80% are women over the age of 50. Approximately 12,400 people die from breast cancer each year in the UK, my stepsister Dilys is one of the latest to be added to this years statistics. (sadly she lost her fight against cancer today).

When she was diagnosed  just before Christmas 2008, the doctors gave her 12 months, turned out to be just six months, this just goes to show that every day we spend on this earth we simply must make the most of it, the old saying of treating each day as if it was your last could not be any further from the truth. Quite often when people are given the news that they are terminally ill they do live everyday as if it was their last, and Dilys did exactly that. (above all with a smile on her face).

The sad thing is I failed to do that, (I failed to take advantage of the time Dilys had left), although we only lived just over 5 miles apart, we had not seen each other for months, I never even got to tell her that I was planning on running in the London Marathon to help raise money for Breast Cancer Care. I was  going to wait until I had a confirmed place, confirmation I would not get until mid October.

What I would like to say to those of you who are reading this post is this.. please  remember that if you are ever given the news that one of your friends or relatives receives that devastating blow of terminal illness, then please make the effort and spend sometime with them, don’t wait for that so called right moment, because that moment is now!!

But as I reflect on this, was the real reason I entered the London Marathon purely an ego trip, was it that I wanted people to think that I was doing this out of pity, was I doing it to make myself feel good about me, “look at me I’m running the Marathon because My Stepsister has Cancer“,  I now know that if I ever did get the chance to tell Dilys before she died she would have said “don’t run for me you soft sod, run for yourself“.

My question now is.. “why do we need a reason to run”, or “why do we wait for an excuse”, millions of people all over the world only decide to run for charity after the event, why don’t we run simply because we can.

Just think about this for a moment, if you where being chased by a rabid angry dog do you think you would find the energy to  run?  Try running when there is no angry dog to chase you, I am sure you will agree it will be a lot harder.

If someone asks me why am I running, my answer will be…..
“it’s because I CAN and that’s why I AM“.. and the money I raise will go to charity.