After many years with a restaurant, bar and nightclub business in South East Asia I started Acorns with Mary Frank as a result of being in the right place at the right time. Having been a squash playing member of the club under its previous ownership we saw the opportunity to take it over with the plan to reinvigorate it after many years of neglect. We think we did this quite well and even survived Covid but were unable to survive the great fire of '22.
Acorns were then invited to discuss the possibility of running the East Grinstead Sports Club and we started doing this in Feb 23. For me this was a fantastic opportunity as it combines my background of food and beverage with my passion for sports and fitness and getting as many people involved as possible.
Just over two years ago I weighed in at 104kg and had a bet with a buddy that I could run a 10k in under 50 mins. No way he said. So I took appropriate steps and got my weight down to 86kg in around 5 months. I narrowly missed the 50 min time but the difference it made to my health was enormous.
I am now going to run the Palma half marathon on Oct 15th to raise as much money as I can for the East Grinstead Hockey Club to help it promote itself and to continue providing the excellent opportunities to the local area.
If I fail to complete it in under two hours I will commit to contributing £250 myself. To put this challenge into perspective I will need to be running an average of 5:40 mins per km for 21 km. As at mid Sep I am recovering from a popped glute and can just manage 6:20 for 5km. I am also weighing in at 92kg and need to get to below 87kg in under 5 weeks.
Thank you Michael, wishing you the very best of luck. From all of us at EGHC