OK, so I am supposed to put here all sorts of stuff like "dig deep" and "support a great cause" .

So, thank you for coming here and reading and please do that for that reason.

Some of you may know I lost a very good friend Sybil to cancer a few years ago. She was German and survived growing up as a small child in post-war Berlin.

In her mid-40's she moved to the Cork countryside where she was the terror of every local Romeo who came into the flower shop she worked in. "You are buying ROSES for your girlfriend? Wat hav you done - had ze affair or lost ze imagination??"

My favourite memory of her is seeing her standing on Middleton High Street, surveying the chaos of a typical Saturday around her and yelling out in a very loud voice "these DAMM Irish, zey do not park ze cars, zey ABANDON dem!"

For all her exterior toughness, she had a heart of gold, a wicked sense of humour and was one of the best dog-handlers I have ever seen.

She was not so hot however with pot-bellied pigs, especially those who escaped and had to be chased across fields by torchlight.

How could you not love a woman who greeted you on the walk home from the pub with the words "get your torches, the pigs are out!”?  A few Friday night pints of Guinness only carries your good mood across so many ploughed fields and ditches. Typical of Sybil though, she had whiskey indoors that night which was distributed with Irish generosity to the pig-chasing posse once the bandits had been recaptured.

I am still wondering who was the tall handsome middle-aged man was who came to see her in hospital when she was there in her last days. I thought from the look of him he was a farmer. I even went as far as to speculate he was someone who she was very intimate with. I only got as far as looking him up and down before I was shoo-ed out of the room for his visit. When I came back, I never asked and she never told but she had a very naughty glint in her eye. Everywoman is allowed to keep her secrets.

So in memory of my friend, the well-loved one-woman German scourge of a small Irish community, I am going to do this race. I am just grateful there are no pigs or coverts involved.

Update 06/03/2008 - A massive thank you to Marv, Jean and Connell who have sponsored me off-line. Cannot believe we are over halfway to £1000. Thank you so much to EVERYONE for your generosity. It is really very very humbling. - Elizabeth