For my sins, our practice Co-ordinator Nichola Sherriff has persuaded me to run the British Open 10k runin London on 12th July 2009.   Of course, she is over 20 years younger than me so it is all right for her - and it's alright for Luke - he just so happens to be going on his stag do that weekend so he is ducking out of it! 

I am in training for it right now so if you are wondering why I look pale when I get to work on a Wednesday morning - well now you know!

Nichola and I are raising money for Jeans for Genes  - a charity that we support every year here at Haynesdenal by wearing jeans to work and donating money to them to do so. For this race Nic and I have a fundraising target of £250 each - that's £500 for a very worthy cause and I feel proud to be supporting them. 

You may not know much about Jeans for Genes but they are a consortium of 4 different charities that help families directly who suffer as result of genetic disorders - did you know there are over 4000 different genetic disorders, most have no known cure and can be incredibly debilitating for the children that suffer with them.

I was reading their website and was particularly struck by the story of a boy with a very rare genetic disorder  hypohhidrotic ectodermal dysplasia or HED which means, amoong other things, that he has no teeth. In fact he has had a pair of dentures made so that he can eat. He is just 4 years old. Imagine that. It is just one of those things that you take for granted; alright you may expect to lose your teeth when you are older, or if you don't care for them well enough, maybe when you are a bit younger, but to actually never even be born with teeth - well it is realy quite shocking. I bet that little boy would love the chance to clean his own teeth and look forward to a visit from the tooth fairy. When I read stories like that it makes me really want to raise as much money as I can to help people like him. So please sponsor me and if you need more convincing please go to www.jeansforgenes.com