Right then...

Before we knew it the race was upon us, then the money poured in and we ended up writing a big old cheque to the RNLI St Helier Lifeboat appeal for £17,000!

What an incredible amount of support people gave us! Thank you thank you thank you!

I don't know yet what our target will be this year, or indeed which charity/s we will raise money for - but needless to say I don't think we can better £17,000!

At the moment, eight members of Team Atko will be on the start line at the end of September, for the 2009 Bupa Great North Run. It is great to see the team carrying on what we started last year. This is all a bit of an extreme way of me getting my mates to visit -and it seems to be working!

I took a bit of time out from my brutal training regime - about 6 months actually and I am back to being a little larger than before, but still able to run a few K's without too much trouble.

Ian's birthday is on 12th of April so I hope to be ready for a 5k then and build slowly from there.

I was pleased with my time last year of 2 hours 38 all things considered, but I wont have cracked the Great North Run until I do it in under 2 hours!

So as of tomorrow - the training starts...