Category: Events

This year I ran my first marathon and what a difficult choice it was. The decision to run it was tough considering I had not done much long-distance running before. Fundraising was fun but still a challenge as was, of course, the training. Rain, sun or snow I had to be out there putting in the miles. In fact, the easiest part of the whole thing was deciding which charity to run for.

John is not a man with free time, but what little time he has is spent doing what he loves: enabling people to achieve their goals and challenging perceptions of what people think is possible. At 42 years old, he works full time as a Technical Lead (or, in his words, a Professional Geek) at LonRes, runs accessible snowboarding sessions for people with disabilities and is currently training for the Royal Parks Half Marathon. When asked why he continues to run his snowboarding sessions on top of all his other projects, John said he wants ‘everyone to experience what I experienced on my first lesson’.

John has been into technology longer than he has been into snowboarding as he learned to code as a child. During a break in his IT career, he decided to travel where he learned how to snowboard and soon the hobby became a passion. He took an instructors course and was soon teaching in the UK. There was, however, a problem. While teaching in Milton Keynes, he noticed that because there were no instructors or resources, not many disabled people were able to take part in the sport.