A short biography of the 6 Towns Run

I run in Stoke-on-Trent, it’s a city in Staffordshire and for people who aren’t familiar with Stoke-on-Trent it’s actually made up of 6 individual and quite unique towns.

In 2010 the city celebrated its centenary having been formed by a federation of the six separate towns in 1910. The settlement from which the federated town (it was not a city until 1925) took its name was Stoke-upon-Trent, where the administration and railway station were located. After the union, Hanley emerged as the primary commercial centre in the city and is now the city centre. The Towns are from north to south, Tunstall, Burslem (known as the mother town), Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton.

 In March that year while at home in front of the TV I watched a Sport relief program about Eddie Izzard who is a hilarious comedian that I love. Though this program was no joke as Eddie had taken it upon himself to run 42 marathons in 50 days with just 5 weeks training!

 It inspired me and I immediately started thinking what I could do within my home city. The year before I’d ran the Tree Tops 10k which is a charity race for the Donna Louise Children’s Hospice in Stoke-on-Trent. I raised £100 for them from that race.

So it was easy for me to say “hey how about I run an endurance event for the children’s hospice”!

And so as part of the year long centenary events I developed the 6 Towns Running challenge and mapped out a half marathon distance run through each town careful not to over lap too much with the other towns and created The 6 Towns Run. 6 half marathons in 6 towns in 6 days!

It was a huge success and I raised just over £1000 for the hospice.

Throughout 2011 I always had it in mind to do another charity run in 2012 and by October / November time I’d decided I’d bring back the 6 Towns Run and run 12 in 2012.

As the Donna Louise Hospice is the only children’s hospice in North Staffordshire and South Cheshire and with twice the amount of half marathons to run this time I could take the 6 Towns Run out to new places.

So I’m very pleased to be running through Newcastle-under-Lyme, the Staffordshire Moorlands and South Cheshire as well as running new routes through Stoke-on-Trent and revisit some of my original 6 Towns Run routes too.

I started training at the beginning of December 2011 and now as I edge ever closer to the start date of 28^th March all I can say is “bring it on. I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be”

Please support me and help make this worthwhile http://www.justgiving.com/6Townsrunx2 please give what you can.

I’ve been working so hard to achieve this and I promise you that no matter what condition I’m in; if I have to crawl, hop or drag myself around. I will do this and complete 12 half marathons in 12 days (157.2 miles).