Back in January the pain of the New York marathon had faded, leaving only fond memories.  I was feeling pretty podgy from all the Christmas festivities, so said to myself “That Leaden Boot Challenge seemed to go ok last year, I’ll do it again.  That will get me off the sofa…” (Oh dear!)

Complacency meant that I did virtually nothing in the way of training for the next three months, before realising with a sense of doom that May 17th is fast approaching.  (As a reminder, the organisers bill the Leaden Boot Challenge as “possibly one of the hardest marathons in the country”.  It’s 26.2 miles with nearly 6000ft of ascent).

The painful memories of all those miles struggling up and down steep hills, followed by a week of being unable to walk, came flooding back, and I came very close to quietly pulling out, safe in the knowledge that I hadn’t told many people about it.

But it struck me that the children affected by Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy don’t have the option of ‘quietly pulling out’.  Tom and his family can’t and won’t give up, so it would be pretty rubbish if I did.

So I’m going ahead, substantially less prepared than last time!  My longest run so far this year is just short of 15 miles and included an altercation with an electric fence (note to self – never try to straddle an electric fence, particularly when soaking wet…) so I have a way to go to even get up to the required distance. I keep telling myself I enjoy this really, I just hope my body doesn’t realise the deception until the end…

If you feel so inclined,  please click this link to go to our Just Giving page.  Collectively (by which I mean mostly other people!) we’ve raised over £9,700.  It would be great if we could get to the £10K mark. Any help is really appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

Matt