Hi All,

First and foremost we hope this post finds you all safe and well?

A very strange year so far and still more to come I suspect. Lots of things are different or haven't happened and that includes our annual trip to the North East to do the Great North Run. This year would have been the 40th GNR and our 20th consecutive one, something we're quite proud of. For all the previous 19, you have helped us raise thousands of pounds for very good causes

As with most large sporting events the GNR was sadly cancelled this year One upside of this was it did allow me to enter and take part in my first official Ultra Marathon on the 6th September, the Gritstone Grind which always clashes within a week of the GNR.

For those of you who don't know it, the Gritstone Trail is very hilly (5500ft of elevation gain) 35 mile trail through the Staffordshire & Cheshire countryside (Kidsgrove to Disley). You can see why I could never really do both events and give my best to each one. So this year was to be my year and it didn't get cancelled due to the low number of runners (only about 120 elected did it this year). With some suitable encouragement along the way and managing to get through the terrible muscle cramp in my legs, I completed the course in just over 7 hours 25 minutes which I was really pleased with  Needless to say it takes a while for an amateur like me to recover from an ordeal like that.....

Of course the Great North Run people weren't going to let the 40th anniversary pass without celebrating it somehow and at least trying to raise some money for charities. They set up the GNR Solo event where runners could enter (all profits going to NHS charities) and then had to do 40 runs in 78 days culminating in a Virtual Great North Run last Sunday (13th). While I was training for my Ultra, Louise was busy running to get her total up to 40 too. We both completed that challenge and were ready to take part in the virtual GNR along with another 16K+ runners who through the use of a mobile phone App were still competing against each other on the day, albeit in different places up and down the country and in fact across the world. We decided to run along the flat Middlewood Way for our attempt (my body didn’t really need any more hills) and saw at least another half dozen or so fellow GNR runners doing the same. Our times were all officially recognised and logged on the GNR website. So whilst not what we all had hoped for at the start of the year, we had managed to mark the anniversary without it just passing by.

Obviously, this year has seen lots of people, businesses, organisation, etc suffer and lots of us will have seen this first hand. One of those areas are the amazing charities that do so much for so many. The runners of the GNR raise millions of pounds each year for many great causes. We appreciate that there isn't so much monetary generosity to go round this year and whilst we haven't made the same sort of commitment an expense of having to drive up to Tyneside and stay over for two nights, we couldn't not at least try and help raise some money for a good cause. With that in mind and the fact it is very after the fact, we thought for a change we would ask for your support of just a few pounds each to Guide Dogs. They do such great work training dogs to help the blind and after all who can resist some cute puppy photos 

The link to the Just Giving page is https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/seanandlouise-gnr20?fbclid=IwAR15ftoom3wWDAsIuMgDMslj52zvZfiGgy2mGAiI2k8a1VUW_Z7Np8-CtFw

While we still wait for our medals in the post, you can view our official results here https://www.greatrun.org/myresults/1030/25196 and https://www.greatrun.org/myresults/1030/23893


As always we're very grateful of your tremendous support and it's what motivates us to do what we do. Thank you!

Sean & Louise