Charity

Ashley's little Sunday stroll

Sadly I've had to withdraw from this year's marathon due to pressures of work preventing adequete training and an ongoing foot injury (cuboid bone in the foot), but I'll continue my fundraising for next year's event, and I am aiming to train throughout 2012 to ensure I am totally prepared for 2013.

Thank you to everyone who has sponsored me already... your donations will be carried over to my target for next year.

Well, if you're reading this then you know why you are here... you may not believe it, but it is true, I am running again, but this time it's a lonnnngggggg one, it is the 2012 Virgin London Marathon.  After four consecutive years of trying to get a place, they finally offered me one!    The fools...

It's one of those things you do, you enter online thinking that it seems like a good idea, little realising that 6 months later when you get accepted and you have consumed hundreds more burgers and kebabs and chips (sometimes all at the same time), that perhaps it was not such a good idea after all.

I need help, lots of it, and motivation so you sponsoring me, might just be the motivation to keep me going. Let's be honest about this, this will be a one-time deal, it is unlikely I will ever run again after this, so please dig deep and sponsor big.

Some of you will think this is easy after all the 10k runs I have done, but those that were there will testify that I can't even manage those very well, the last one took me 90 minutes in July to complete the British 10k!   So somehow, I have to get around 26.2 long miles in April. I am not going to do anything silly or stupid like claim to run the entire way in a time of 4 or 5 hours, my one and only aim is to get around that course, be that 6 hours or 12 hours, I am going to run, walk, crawl, but I will complete those 26.2 miles... yes I will Kylie, stop laughing Ruth.. I will!!!! I will I tell ya! (the more I say, the more I am trying to convince myself).

So your sponsorship really will be a motivational tonic over the cold wet rainy winter months of training. Plus, it will be harder for me compared to other runners, because I have one leg and foot shorter than the other, the same leg I broke my knee on three years ago, so I naturally run in a circular direction! Lol

I know that come March and April you will be getting lots of colleagues and friends asking you to sponsor them for their worthy cause, and I am sure each of them are very worthy causes, and I don't wish to do anything to take potential sponsorship away from them, but let me tell you why my charity is different, and why I really would appreciate ALL of your kind sponsorship money.

Well most of you will already know that since a young child I have suffered with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and let me tell you, it is not just a little bit of quirky hand-washing as some of the popular media would have us believe, it is an horrible, distressing, debilitating and disabling illness. Whist I may look like the care free bachelor you see before your eyes today the OCD robbed me of my quality of life during the majority of my adult life, it is only in the last 2 or 3 years that I have started to break the shackles of my OCD to become this fine figure of a man you see before you today.

During my twenties when most people are enjoying life, getting drunk, travelling, having lots of relationships and sex (god I envy them people), and generally just having a blast, my life was a regimented routine designed to prevent me from having to use public toilets.  I would wake up, go to work, avoid eating too much whilst at work to avoid the loo, I would come home straight after work and decline all invites from friends to socialise, I would eat on the way home or soon as I got in, I would force myself to use the loo which left me feeling unclean. I would wash and shower until I 'felt' clean, but the more you try to create a 'feeling' the less certain you become, I would wash and wash and wash. Eventually I would feel 'just right' and I would towel myself off carefully getting out of the shower not to touch the toilet or the sink and carefully go to my room. I would look at the clock, it would be 10pm or sometimes midnight, just time to watch something on TV for a hour, then it was bed and do it all over again the next day and the day after and the day after that.   For me, OCD was emotionally and physically draining and it robbed me of my quality of life during those fun 20s, I did not have a girlfriend and rarely socialised, OCD robbed me.

Compared to some people with OCD I was lucky, I managed to get out to work each day and I survived, for others surviving each and every day is a battle, a real desperate battle to survive, thankfully most do, some don't.  Last month I helped a family whose 7-year-old daughter is so scared of contamination she does not wear any clothes and walks around naked or with just one pair of underwear that 'feels' clean, as a result she cant go to school.  The local NHS refused to even diagnose it as OCD because they don't think a child as young as 7 can have OCD, well that little girl and I are proof that children can have OCD.  The poor family have been banging their head against the wall to get OCD treatment from the NHS and they should not have to fight, our charity is there to help.  The big difference between me and this little girl is that I had to wait until I was 27 to know my illness was called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, she is only 7, so the charity will do what it can to make sure she gets treated soon and that OCD does not go on to plague her for another 20 years.   I have also just read the story of a mother whose 24 year-old daughter took her own life a few years ago because she could no longer face the horribly intrusive thoughts that sometimes plague people with the OCD.   Another story is a young woman who told me she won't have children even though she wants them because of her OCD, for any woman to make such a decision must have been heart-breaking, but with support and treatment they should not have to make such decisions.   

It is for that little girl, the young woman and that mother that I will complete this 26.2 miles, to raise money for the charity I founded with my friend Steve, a fellow OCD sufferer and now run with my colleagues, all of whom have suffered with this illness too. I am running for OCD-UK.

I am not telling you my story to make you feel sorry for me, but to highlight just how much OCD can rob a person of their life, how it can change them, and sadly in some cases in tragic circumstances. Please consider sponsoring me and supporting OCD-UK.

OCD-UK is not big, not well known, and perhaps may not be considered quite as appealing for donations compared to other charities, but OCD is just as terrifying and destroys just as much, OCD matters.

The poster on my fundraising page was drawn by the little girl I refer to, it shows her 'OCD bully', her Grump as we refer to OCD sometimes.

To my friends that have sponsored my 10k run over the last few years, thank you and please, once more, one final time?   I promise I will not be asking you to sponsor me again for at least 2 years... and let's be honest, if I manage this then I am not going near a pair of running shoes ever again!

Ashley.

P.S.  Can anyone lend me a running machine.

P.P.S. Can anyone help me do this? I need a personal trainer!

P.P.P.S. It seemed like such a good idea at the time to enter, not so sure now...oh boy, this is gonna hurt, I need a coke and a burger.

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