Hello again. I'm back, fresh legged and ready for 2010.

So what do you do when you've successfully run a marathon and raised a bunch of money for charity? You do it again obviously. Only this time you run 3 marathons.

The challenge starts once again in London, in my opinion the best marathon in the world. 4 weeks later (yes, that's 4 weeks) I'll be up in Scotland taking on the Edinburgh marathon. That's going to be interesting considering the state my poor body was in for many weeks after London last year but other people have done this double and I know I can as well if I train properly. So don't worry.....I know what I'm doing!

But why do 2 marathons when you can do 3? After a little break and some summer training, if all goes well, I'll be taking part in my first overseas marathon in Berlin in September 2010.

Success is not a certainty, this challenge is going to involve some serious training and way more miles under my belt than ever before and I'm not sure if my body will hold together long enough. But I'm in good shape and not usually prone to injury so right now it seems achievable.

Why am I running 3 marathons?

Well....I'm not entirely sure about that! I definitely wanted another go at London because I didn't do quite as well as I hoped, but I also thought I needed an extra challenge to keep me motivated. I've spoken to a few people who have run the London/Edinburgh double. I thought they were insane but they've inspired me to try as well. I think if I focus more on endurance rather than speed in my training, it'll help to overcome the mental block that's in my brain at the moment, screaming "2 marathons in 4 weeks! Are you crazy?"

And I've never run an overseas race before. Berlin is another major event, even bigger than London in terms of participation and, if it's to be believed, the fastest marathon course in the world. Haile Gebrselassie's current world record was set there.

So in short...why not!

Running for AbleChildAfrica

My charity this time is AbleChildAfrica who work with disabled and young people throughout Africa to improve their access to health care, education and employment opportunities. After running for UK based charities on the previous two occasions I wanted to focus on an African one this time round.

If you're reading this there's a good chance you've supported me in the past and I'm definitely aware of how much I've appealed to the same people over the years. I'm giving a lot of thought to different ways of raising sponsorship this year, to try and keep things a bit more interesting. But if you'd like to donate to my fund anyway, you know how grateful I'll be.

Thanks for reading; please have a look around the site, I'll keep updating it whenever something interesting happens.

Bye for now.
John