A friend of Harrison's dad from his university days (without giving too much away, it was a long time ago!!) recently got in touch having followed Harrison’s FaceBook page.

Barb Wells had entered the Bournemouth Marathon, along with her husband, as a way to mark a 'significant birthday' (as we all do….and we couldn't possibly say which one of course!). As well as the challenge of the training and then actually running it, had decided she also wanted to use it to get sponsorship in order to raise some money for the trust fund.

We were so delighted and grateful for her even thinking of Harrison, let alone wanting to raise some money for him.

So we not only wanted to use this opportunity to thank her, we also wanted to tell you all about how gutsy and courageous she was in the end (and it might spur even more people to sponsor her after hearing how amazing she was).

It was Barbs first ever attempt at a marathon and we kept in touch during her training, which was going really well, but then it all took a turn for the worse.

On one 18 mile run (yes, 18 miles!!) she injured her foot badly and wondered if she would be able to run the race all, so saw a physio. Fortunately the physio thought it would be fine with lots of ice and rest which she did, but it put a stop to the training at a vital stage with a few weeks still left to go until the big day!

Having not run again, things then got even worse. Barbs got a bad virus, so as well as not having trained as much as she would have liked for a distance she'd never run before, she was now really poorly as well… with only a week to go!!

The doctors advised against running and I think its fair to say that at that stage most of us would have given up, thought its not meant to be and probably gone back to bed…..but not Barbs. She put her trainers on and spurred on by everyone, started the race!!

Although she didn’t quite manage to finish it, remarkably Barbs still made it to the 23 mile mark, which with all things considered and knowing how ill she was feeling, is an incredible achievement and nothing to be ashamed of at all.

Barbs was naturally disappointed not to finish the race but I don’t think many of us would have even got out of bed feeling as bad as she did, let alone attempt to run 26 miles…and with raising money for Harrison’s trust fund at the same time, we think she should feel extremely proud of herself and we can’t thank her enough, except showing our gratitude on here......so thank you Barbs, thank you so much xxx

If you would still like to sponsor Barbs you can do so via PayPal on this site (http://www.harrisonstrustfund.co.uk/donate.php) or alternatively contact us or ask Barbs for the trust fund bank details (which we do prefer as PayPal take a small amount off every donation unfortunatley), thank you.