Colin Bathe / IPF Research
My Story
IPF or Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis is a horrible lung disease that few people have heard of but is unfortunately well known in my family. It currently has no cure with the best treatment being a lung transplant. Research into IPF is limited by funding which is a small fraction of other better known diseases so for this reason I’m running the 2024 London Marathon to raise funds for IPF. I have paid the entry fee for the run so 100% of donation will be going to the charity Breathing Matters. They in turn spend 98.9% of what they receive on research.
Getting around the London Marathon isn’t going to be a problem for me. I’ve done at least 10 marathons in the past, including the London Marathon in 2017, and maybe 30 to 40 ultra marathons including four 100 milers. My issue and target is to get around in a good time. In 2017 I achieved a time of 3:27 which is still my PB. I would like to get close to this again and if I’m really on form, it would be good to beat the London Marathon good for age time of 3:20. I’m really not sure if that it is possible but it is a good target to aim for.
Training wise, I’m currently running around 25 miles a week which has given me a good base to work from. Likely I will push this up to around 30 to 40 miles a week to get myself into as good a shape as is possible. It would also be good to lose a bit of weight!
