Simon's 1,718km in 17/18

As I began to come to terms with his passing, before going to sleep on the second day, it suddenly hit me that my "proper Dad" was gone.  Forever.   Since May we had been dealing with Dad in hospital and the last week was even more difficult.  Following 2 bouts of pneumonia (I read recently that up to 2/3 of patients with forms of dementia will ultimately die due to pneumonia) treatment was stopped and Dad held on for nearly a week. The first couple of days was about letting go of that Dad, the Dad who had struggled on and on in hospital for the last months, weeks and days.  However after that I remembered (obviously hadn't forgotten) than the old Dad, the "proper Dad" had passed. With the gradual, but unstoppable regression of recent months I had not stopped to try to draw a line where I can hand on heart remember him as a whole person.  Family members spoke of the last thing he said to them, but I think the last proper thing he said to me was ...

May has been holiday time for the last few years and 2017 was no exception.  Dad's condition earlier in the year made it difficult to know whether to go away separately or as one big family.  As it turned out, shortly after the diagnosis of mixed dementia in February, we booked a cottage in East Sussex for 10 of us, 4 generations of the family from great-grand parents down to the youngest, my son Harry who is just 8 months old. No one knows what the future will bring but most of us accepted that this could well be our last family holiday with all of us involved and could well be dad's last chance at a holiday. I write this now a few weeks after the holiday and I'm still happy that it was the right thing to do, to try to bring us all together.  Did every single person have their most amazing holiday ever? Probably not, but hopefully most of us brought something away that we can draw on in the coming months and years. Let's start at the beginning....

Nearly one month in and things are starting to gain momentum. Alzheimer's Research UK released the article about our run on 6 April in Cambridge check out the article here -  Team of 20 from Price Bailey will each run equivalent of 40 marathons in a year for charity | Alzheimer's Research UK . At work we have 26 people tracking their daily walking and running, with a total to track how we are doing compared to the required daily average: so far so good on that front. I've booked a place on the Vitality London 10k run on 29 May, I'm looking forward to that as my first 10k of the year and to get out with other runners and sport the ARUK vest around London. I shouldn't need this external awareness and scrutiny to motivate me.  I don't think I need it, but its a nice extra push, so I pushed myself out on two runs over the Bank Holiday Weekend, one West to All Saints Church, Little Canfield and the other around Hatfield Forest.

It's not all doom and gloom; I'm conscious that I've been focusing on the seeming enormity of the challenge for the year ahead. In pushing myself beyond my comfort zone, I'm hoping to see more places close to home and far away that I might not have seen otherwise. Had a quick 3.5k run yesterday that ended up going unexpectedly cross-country near Great Canfield: perhaps its best to plan those ahead next time! As you can see from the photos, Spring has certainly sprung.  Looking forward to seeing the changes as the seasons change.