A Cumbrian dad is getting ready to take on another mammoth run in his latest bid to raise money and awareness for his daughter’s rare medical condition.
Ian Spriggs, 56, from Brampton is planning to run 350 miles in 10 days, starting from Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and finishing at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary starting on July 21.
Along the way, he will stop at Birmingham, Sheffield and Bradford hospitals where he will be greeted by welcome parties and people cheering him on.
He has already taken on a number of marathons and ultramarathons including a 235-mile run in six days and the full 87-mile length of Hadrian’s Wall path in one day.
Each fundraising challenge he takes on pushes him further than the last – and he does it all while raising awareness for PKU, a condition that affects his daughter, Molly.
PKU makes it so the body is unable to break down an amino acid found in protein, which means if protein is consumed the same way an average person would consume it, it can cause brain damage.
The condition is managed mainly through a low-protein diet, which means Molly must strictly avoid a large amount of foods and supplement her diet with artificial protein.
NSPKU, the charity that supports people with PKU and their families and which Ian is fundraising for is also celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
Ian said: “I’ve done a few fundraisers for NSPKU, normally I do a Christmas time marathon dressed absolutely ridiculously, but with it being their 50th anniversary this year I thought I’d give fundraising a rest and then come back with an almighty bang.
“I thought I could do something extremely out of my comfort zone and attempt to go from London to Newcastle, and it is by far the biggest thing I’ve ever taken on.
“NSKPU is such a small charity that it doesn’t get any help from the government or any outside sources except from people fundraising, so I will be carrying on my fundraising in future years and lord knows what I’ll do after this one.”
Ian also supported the charity through its campaign to make a drug called Kuvan available on the NHS which if successful, can make it so those with KPU can eat a larger variety of foods.
Molly, who is now 19 and has completed her first year of university at Bangor in Wales, was one of the first people in the UK to go on a trial of the drug to see if her body would respond to it.
Ian said: “It didn’t work for her, but the fight still goes on because there are many parts of the country where Kuvan is not prescribed and people living with KPU still need all the help they can get.
“You can become a wizard at managing KPU but you still can’t cope with it in every day life, because you can’t eat what your friends eat and you can’t go to takeaways, go to parties or book a table in a restaurant so it is really difficult and has a massive effect on people.
“If you go look in your cupboards you will see every single food in your cupboard has protein in it and those are the foods people can’t eat, it’s a very restrictive diet and you have to become imaginative with the items that you can eat.
“Molly still has her daily struggles of what she can and can’t eat, but she seems to be managing it quite well and this is the first time in her life she is dealing with it on her own.”
You can donate to Ian’s fundraiser here: ianspriggs-justgiving
If you’d like to follow along Ian’s run, you can watch him live via a tracking app here: racetracker-ian
