When your mother has run 13 marathons and raised over £40,000 ($64,000) for charity, like mine has, then I would say it was inevitable that one day I would want to take on the challenge that has had her hooked for so long.
My Mum is 57 years old and has run 13 full marathons, many half marathons, and countless 5k and 10k races! She really is a superstar and an inspiration. The very best thing about all these races she has done is the amount of money she has raised for charity along the way. Causes dear to her heart such as Whizz Kidz and Motivation have benefitted from her determination and kindness with huge donations.
Most recently she took on a challenge to run 100 miles of races in one year to fund a young man from Tanzania through a Wheelchair Technologists Training Course so he could learn how to build and maintain wheelchairs in his community.
I have travelled to many cool places to see my Mum run the gruelling 26.2 mile race; New York City, Disney World (where she ran a half marathon Saturday and a full marathon Sunday!) and Dublin (all I remember from that trip is gale force winds!) And every time I stand there in the crowd waiting and searching through the runners for that familiar face to whizz by I feel such a sense of pride and a lump in my throat as I recognize once again how very fabulous my mum is!
I might also add that as well as all these marathons and races she has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro twice. As you do.
This year spells the end of long distance running for my Mum and she will be running the Great North Run (the world's biggest half marathon) on September 19th, her last hurrah! This race also signifies the passing of the baton, from mother to daughter, her last and my first long distance race and my only hope is that I can be a tiny bit as amazing as her.
If you have come to this blog following an email or a letter from my Mum please consider sponsoring me for my first marathon, as she finishes her last, and help me follow in her footsteps and raise money for an important charity to our family.
The leukemia and lymphoma society is a cause very close to our hearts, my Grandpa, her Father passed away from non-hodgkins lymphoma in 2000 and for every marathon my Mum has ever done we wish he could have been in the crowd, with his camera and his foot stool, snapping pictures of his daughter and being the proud father he always was.
