One Gillingham fan, Brad Hewitt, is to go that extra mile in April when he runs the London Marathon again for charity.
The keen football supporter will take to the streets of London once again as he looks to make as much money for MACS – a charity that supports children who are born either with no eyes or underdeveloped eyes.
With Hewitt set to pound the hard London roads for the second time in two years, the Gillingham fan told KSN why he is doing it:
“I ran my first London marathon last year and ended with a very disappointing time of 6 hours 33 minutes. I injured my groin in training and it came back to haunt me during the run.”
“I got through the first 13 miles fine and was on for a fairly decent time, then my groin went again. I’d never known pain like it and the last half of the marathon were absolute agony as I hobbled to and across the finish line.”
“I was lucky that a friend waited an hour for me to catch up and we ran the last 4 miles and crossed the line together. I had to stop several times to get treatment on my groin from St John’s Ambulance people which only stopped the pain for a few metres!”
“I ran for a charity called MACS last year and had absolutely no hesitation in choosing them as my charity this year, as I was determined to run it again to beat my poor time.”
“I was lucky enough to meet some of the children and the families I’ll be helping when I finished last year and that makes all the pain worthwhile.”
MACS stands for Micro and Anophthalmic Children’s Society and the London Marathon is their biggest source of income. This is a charity which supports children who are born either with no eyes or underdeveloped eyes.
This is a condition that develops during pregnancy and I was amazed at the statistics about the amount of children that suffer from this condition.
10.4 per 100,000 births suffer from this condition, which means that about 80-90 children are born in the UK with this condition every year.
Unfortunately, no treatment can restore the vision of these poor children and they will never lead the life that you and I lead but this is what MACS are for. MACS do amazing work with these children and they do their best to help them lead a life which is as normal as possible.
The main aims of the charity are (taken from their website www.macs.org.uk):
- Raise the profile of these rare conditions
- Encourage families to support each other
- Provide beneficial rest for parents, children and extended family members
- Provide financial assistance to MACS families who need to purchase equipment or services to help meet their specific needs
- To become the leading international resource on Anophthalmia, Microphthalmia and Coloboma, for parents and professionals.
With his second marathon fast approaching, Brad told KSN how his training is going ahead of the 26 mile run:
“Training started off slow to be honest, but recently I’ve been getting some miles under my belt and my fitness is getting better all the time.”
“I already feel better than I did at any time during last year’s training. The key thing for me really is just staying fit and making sure when I get any niggles, I have a couple of days off as I’m now fully aware of what happens if you don’t!”
“Obviously the main aim is to smash last year’s time and I will do that if I stay fit. I’m aiming for as close to 4 hours as possible, anything around that time would be great.”
“I got my running vest through the post and that’s when it really sort of kicks in that it’s getting close. There’s just under 7 weeks to go now and it’s coming round so quickly, I’m just looking forward to getting it out the way to be honest and being lazy again for a few months!”
“I just need to keep racking up the miles, I have some longer runs planned in the next couple of weeks so hopefully they go well and come Sunday 13th April I’ll be raring to go and smash my time.”
“I need to raise £1250 and I’m currently just over £500 off my target so if anyone could just donate a few quid it would mean a great deal to me, the children and their families.”
Brad Hewitt’s sponsorship page is http://uk.