I cannot believe I’m even writing this blog post today. But I’ve made the very difficult decision to halt on my 12 in 12 challenges for epilepsy awareness until further notice.

I’m sad by all of the above, and feel horrendous for letting everyone down. Rest assured I trained so so incredibly hard for all this, so it isn’t a case of I wasn’t ready, but races have been cancelled for many. I know I need to refocus and look at where I can go from here, but it’s still quite hard.

Too many cancellations

I wanted to do the 12 in 12 continuously, so as that can’t happen, we’re hitting the pause. It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ll get it back. I’ve been super upset by it. Firstly Ironman Oceanside got cancelled, then our entire 3 week California road trip and finally the Keswick Mountain Festival.

Why not home challenges?

Hopefully, I’ve managed to spread some epilepsy awareness with what I’ve achieved so far. I just didn’t feel that 3 challenges I created myself would be good enough. These last 3 were by far the most challenging and the ones I had worked the hardest for. Therefore I want to wait and tackle 3 different challenges when I can.

Creating epilepsy awareness

During the challenges I’ve done I’ve managed to get my story into a few big publications, and I’ve had so many messages off fellow epileptics and those who were unsure if they were epileptic. Either way I’ve hopefully opened the conversation, and will continue to do so.

What to remember with all this

I know what we are dealing with is far bigger than me doing challenges. The main thing at the moment is for everyone to stay safe. I keep thinking I’m going to suddenly wake up from this global nightmare, but it’s not happened yet. So whilst we wait, I’m going to keep smiling and keep driving epilepsy awareness. Stick with me – and I’ll keep pushing on.