My Story

Another year on and I'm rattling the charity bucket for Duchenne again. I don't do charity rides in order to gain access to big events or just to have an excuse to cycle. I do them because I want to support the charity. Usually these will be smaller charities where I believe that a greater percentage of the amount raised will reach the front line and their access to funds is limited.

In the case of Duchenne,I want to support research because it gets so little funding elsewhere. The number of sufferers is not comparatively high compared to other diseases, so institutional funds tend to get allocated elsewhere. Only boys are born with Duchenne and they won't survive to lead an adult life. They will deteriorate and waste away during their teens.

To have a child with Duchenne must be devastating, but my good friend Nick Taussig has two sons with this fatal disease.....words cannot express how dumbstruck I was when I learned of this. What Nick and Klara must have felt like, I simply cannot imagine.

So, I'm riding for Harrison's Fund, run by Alex Smith and bearing his son's name. The money goes to research a cure for the disease so that one day, no boy will need to suffer this horrendous disease.

I'll be taking on the Festive 500 Challenge of cycling 500 kilometres over 8 days between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. It's the weather that is the challenge, not the cycling, but let's try and beat this disease. My target is to raise £500, commensurate to the distance, although more would be great.

Please support this cause, and say a prayer over Christmas for the families who suffer this horrble disease.

Many thanks