Gosport man walks over 1,000 miles in a dinosaur suit before taking on the London Marathon to help fund a cure for MND
A Gosport man is walking to the start line of The London Marathon to help find a cure for a disease which has deeply affected his family—all while dressed as a dinosaur.
He has now raised almost £7,500 for the MND Association, a charity that supported him and his family when his mother was diagnosed, by taking on the challenge of walking over 100 miles from Lee on the Solent to the start line of the London Marathon—to top it all off, he’s doing it in a dinosaur suit.
Graeme is doing all he can to help a charity that have been so crucial to him and his family. He said: “They’re a fantastic charity, they’re very very supportive. They came round and helped with adapting to our home so that my mum could keep her independence.”
So far he has spent 200 days training in preparation for the challenge, walking a total of 965 miles. Now it is just the matter of 108 miles to the Greenwich start line and the 26.2-mile-long London Marathon, by the end of it he will have clocked up well over a 1,000 miles.
He has been blown away by the generosity of the people he has met along the way. One lady stopped to give him a pound coin, after hearing Graeme’s story, she drove off and came back again with a £10 note from a nearby cashpoint. She even made the shopkeeper donate £5 too.
Graeme said: “I just can’t get over people's generosity, really, it’s very nice to be really engaged with not just our local community, but all the different communities that we’re heading into while walking.”
MND is a term used to describe a group of neurodegenerative diseases where the motor neuron, a type of nerve cell, becomes damaged. Graeme said: “It’s a terrible disease, it’s very difficult for families because they feel helpless, there’s very little they can do.”
The disease kills six people a day in the UK and currently has no cure. Graeme hopes that one day, with the help of the money he has raised, this will change.
He said: “It’s going to make a difference and there will be a cure that’s found. It’s just how quickly we can do that by raising this money, so it’s vital that we do it. To stop families losing their loved ones before their time.”