And so it begins.....

MARIA:
Our marathon story starts on December 2nd when I received an email from my niece, Fiona, asking if I would be interested in running the Norway Midnight Marathon. Fiona works for Focus Birmingham and the idea to run the marathon and raise money for the charity came from their Events Fundraiser Andy Kilminster. Andy was aware that I had run the ING Miami Marathon in January 2009 and the Bank of America Chicago Marathon in October 2009, and thought I might like to run another.

Ok, so the Norway Midnight Marathon takes place in Tromso on June 19th. At that time of year the sun doesn’t set for two months, from the middle of May to the middle of July, so although the race starts at midnight you are running in daylight. Now when I read about this my first reaction was: how awesome would it be to take part in this very unique marathon? And, to run for charity makes it an even better experience. I emailed the information to my boyfriend, Christian, who immediately decided he wanted to take part too.

Now there was a small catch…I was already registered for the Virgin London Marathon which takes place on April 25th. I’m a novice runner so partaking in two marathons a couple of months apart seemed quite daunting. There would be little time to recover from the first marathon before I’d be back in my running shoes training for the next. And what if I injured myself?

Then I thought: I'll be fine. I'll make it work. And, since I'm running London anyway I might as well run both marathons for Focus?

Fortunately, Andy had a charity spot in the London Marathon and Christian was up to the challenge of running both events…..and thus Team Focus was born.

Since there were 2 of us, running 2 marathons, in 2 months, in 2 different countries, it was decided we would aim to raise $20,000.....

Training and fundraising start January 1st.