I'm attempting to run a marathon in every country in the EU (28 in total) raising awareness and funds for Invest In ME (www.investinme.org) a leading ME research charity.

I've now completed 8 of my marathons!  UK, Czech Rep, Finland, Ireland, Greece, Sweden, Poland and Belgium!

I will be running the 9th of my 28 Marathons in Toulouse (Fra) on Oct 23rd 2016–any donation you’d like to make will cover the overall 28 Marathon Challenge.

For more information & training progress please visit: www.mikeseumarathons.eu

I'm not a natural runner, I'm short and a bit out of shape, I've also partially torn my right cruciate and been advised not to do any long distance running by my NHS physio!  2016 will see me tackle 5 more before a further 5 if I can afford it in 2017.

I'll be aiming to hook up with ME associations and get some TV/press exposure for our cause in each country.  I'm on facebook (www.facebook.com/mikeseumarathons) and twitter (@mikesEUmaras).

Over 250,000 people in the UK suffer with the ME and that includes 25,000 children as well as one of my good friends who has suffered for almost 10 years with the illness.  Watching him drift from year to year without improvement is extremely hard to watch, I want to try to do something to stop this.  He's not depressed or making it up, he's one of the most popular and positive people I know. He's ill.

Invest In ME (www.investinme.org) are committed to raising funds and awareness to find the cause and cure and are a voluntarily run organisation doing some amazing work.  They're the only organisation really making progress in working with scientists and researchers to find cures and treatments.  They want a specialist centre of excellence for ME where patients can get diagnosis and treatment and have even crowd-funded their own clinical trial to mirror the amazing results from the Norwegian Rituximab trial.

ME is an indiscriminating illness with no set recovery time or guarantee of recovery.  It is the most common reason for school absence amongst children in the UK.  Symptoms include severe pain, fatigue, sickness and cognitive dysfunction amongst many others, some are house bound, some are bed bound, some give up all hope.  Little if nothing has been done by the government and MRC to help people with ME for decades, we need to help patients now.  Current treatments prescribed by GP's (as a result of the disastrous tax payer funded PACE trial) include CBT and exercise therapy which only make patients much worse. If you know someone with ME -donating to Invest In ME is how you can help them get better, we need research and we need it now.

Thanks for your support!