Coming across Tower Bridge after twelve miles

Slow and in pain at The Embankment

Walking across the finishing line

Another view at the finishing line

I receive my medal at the finish

My finishers certificate

After such a difficult marathon, I was worried the my hip may take months to repair itself, but I was adamant that I would try to get straight back into my running. I visited a physiotherepist, who gave me various stretches to help the muscles in my leg, and this does seem to have helped my recovery.

I am now running at least three time a week, mainly training with the athletics club, which usually involves speed work - fast, short distances. I ran the Dorking 10 last Sunday, which is a 10 mile race. My primary aim was to finish the race, and this I did in a time of 80 minutes, which is my slowest 10 mile race time so far, although I was running fairly leisurely. I just felt a twinge from my hip after eight miles which only lasted for a short distance, so I am very hopeful of a speedy recovery from the injury. I will now start to run at the ten mile distance once a week, and so improve my fitness as well as training for longer distance running.

In the not too distant future I will run the Great North Run (in September) and the Great South Run (in October), but my main effort will be to once again compete in the London Marathon, and the website is already updated for 2002 at http://waltersfamily.org/marathon, where you will see links back to the previous years websites.

I have at last collected in all of the money to give to the NSF, and the vast majority of my collection has been gift aided, to give the NSF even more money by claiming back the income tax. The final total for my 2001 collection is £1,740, and my brother (who ran with a guaranteed marathon place which I provided for him) collected £1,200 for the NSF, and so between us we collected £2,940. I am very pleased with this total, bearing in mind neither of us ran with a "gold bond" charity marathon place (which cost the charities a few hundred pounds each).

I have received the photographs taken by the official photographers on the day, and they appear above, reproduced by courtesy of Action Photo. I hope that you enjoy them.

As my final message, I want to thank you for supporting my 2001 campaign. It means a lot to me that you support all the work I put in to this collection, and it is great that between us all, we can actually make a difference for mentally ill people and their carers, some of which are the most vulnerable people in our society.

Best wishes,

Paul.