Challenge Complete!

Long time no speak, but it's now 2016 if you hadn't already noticed! :-)
You know what that means....my challenge is complete! I also have some amazing news and to celebrate I thought I would resurrect the blog. With a new fancy look too! What d'ya think? :-)

2015 was an amazing year on both a charity and personal achievment perspective. In the end a total of £3,567.61 was raised for Kidney Research UK, which is over 3 and a 1/2 times more than I set out to raise in January last year. The support has been amazing and me and Amy owe a huge amount of gratitude to every one of you you donated! Thank-you!

As well as the amazing amount of cash raised, it also un-earthed a personal talent and opened up opportunities for me athletically which I never thought were possible. As part of the challenge I managed to break several course records, hold the title for UK U23 Fastest Marathoner of the Year 2015 and I won my first ever marathon at Brathay in May! Who would have ever thought ey?!

As much as the challenge is providing the funding to help people with kidney disease in the future, it has also helped myself through a difficult year and I hope it helped Amy too! It allowed me to channel my emotions and at times, as difficult as it may have been, provided a focus and something other than the constant stresses of dealing with illness in loved ones, working life, education and paying bills, etc. Sacrifices have had to be made over the last 3-4 years to say the least and in some aspects still are on a daily basis, however I would not change any of the decisions we have made. I honestly believe that without me completing this challenge and my training, the last year in particular would have been incredibly difficult and I am not sure how I would have coped without it. So thank you to everyone who has made it possible and supported myself and Amy all the way!


The amazing news I have is that at the end of November, we were given a date for Amy's transplant! Her amazing and incredibly brave uncle was to donate his kidney to her on 6th January 2016. Everything we had been building up for and had been taking sooo long to progress, was finally coming to a close!

Amy at her hospital birthday party, 4 days post transplant

The next amazing news is that the transplant went amazingly well! Amy left hospital after only 8 days and looked amazing. You'd never have thought she had only recently had a major operation. She is gradually getting the life that she deserves back and nothing in the world could make everyone around her happier! Here's to 2016!

Amy's decided to tell her story and blog about recovery here too.

I will be having a little bit of a change for the blog from now on. I will update with periodic training posts of how things are going, however I don't want to bore people week in, week out with "this is how many miles I ran this week", "on Tuesday I put on half a pound", "my Garmin VO2max has increase 1 point", etc, etc.  I will try and do my best to do posts which the majority of people who visit this blog may be interested in and may benefit from. Perhaps training food recipes/nutrition, race schedules and reports, kit reviews, training tips, etc. Feel free to leave comments below with anything you would like to see! :-)

Speak soon! :-)
 - Grant