Reading Marathon: one of the lucky few

John Matthews has been one of the lucky few to get one of our limited places in the Reading Marathon 2008. He wrote in to let us know how he's getting on, god love him. Good luck John!:

Training in the winter is not so much fun, having said that the crunchy light snow we had a couple of weeks ago was a bit of a novelty.

I'm glad to be able to run and grateful for the place... I will have run the Eastborne half three weeks before and will run the London Marathon a month later for DELTA a deaf education charity of which I am a director. So your place for me as part of the training is very valuable.
I had a major rectal cancer operation June 28 2007 and now have an internal pouch constructed from a bit of colon, can be interesting sometimes. I started running 10 months ago to regain fitness and because I had a secret ambition to be able to, 'take to the streets' but had failed to pluck up the courage. So now I have run the British London 10K - 1:07, the Bristol Half - 2:30 and the Great North - 2:24 and have raised around £2,500 - done two radio interviews, featured in lots of newspapers and have more being set up, possibly regional TV, before the LM.

People have been very generous but I'm running out of target groups so any ideas will be welcome, running is the easy bit, raising the cash is harder.

So I'll set up the justgiving site today ... A friend of mine in his sixties at church recovered from 'Non Hogkinsons' a few years ago and is still well I'm glad to say and I'll be 70, 3 weeks before Reading 2:10 is the target, we'll see. And still working full time.

Well that's the introduction if you can make any mileage out of the story then that's fine - cancer can be beaten - and by the Grace of God and the skill of the team at the John Radcliffe I'm here to run the race (:>)

God bless
John

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