Sheffield Half Marathon 2009

The MND Association (South Yorkshire Branch) was selected as one of the charities to benefit from the 2009 Sheffield Half Marathon ..

This proved a fantastic opportunity to raise the awareness of MND in our region and will have raised lots of money (details later) for people in South Yorkshire living with the disease. On the day, which was warm and sunny, the red shirts of the MND team  were very much in evidence with over 40 runners taking part as well as the "Fun" runners.

 Thank you to all who took part in the event and to the large team of helpers behind the scenes.

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Why I'm running for the Motor Neurone Disease Association

Richard Mead  Reasercher at the Hallamshire Hospital Sheffield 

 My research with Professor Pam Shaw at the Medical School in Sheffield involves searching for new treatments to slow disease progression in MND patients.  After working on multiple sclerosis for a drug company, I decided to apply what I had learned about drug developement to MND as Sheffield has everything in place to take up the challenge 

The research is frustratingly slow though, compared to the speed with which this disease progresses. Running for MND allows me to directly show support for those affected by the disease and for the MNDA who support both the researchers and MND patients and their families. The story of one family in particular really moved me ( see www.plattitude.co.uk ). Neil Platt was a new father when he was first diagnosed with MND and within a few months he could no longer carry his new son and his disease progressed very rapidly. Sadly he recently died.