Saturday April 21 2007 - I'm riding my bike on a triathlon training ride when a van driver didn't see me. He was on the other side of the road and he turned in front of me and I collided with his vehicle and entered the the van through the closed passenger window. My jugular vein was lacerated and I would have bleed to death but a good citizen saved me. I was airlifted to hospital in the Sussex Police Helicopter, I suffered a fractured skull, severe brain injury, broken ribs, punctured lung, fractured shoulder bones, nerve damage, partial loss of hearing and lost a lot of blood! A lot of my treatment was at Kings College Hospital - as now seen in '24 Hours in A&E'. However, because I guess its not interesting (i.e. televisual), they don't show the intensive care unit and high dependency wards where you go spend the next days or weeks.

Sunday April 22 2007 - a few hours later the next day - its the London Marathon and I'm in the Critical Care Unit of Kings College Hospital. Apparently my wife told me the results When a few weeks later I eventually regained consciousness, as one of my earliest targets I vowed to run the London Marathon.

Vince on Tower Bridge2008 saw me run the London Marathon, only 51 weeks after being critically injured.

I absolutely hated every minute of the 2008 event and said "I'll never do that again". But six years later I had changed my mind, so I entered the draw for a Crawley Athletic Club place and my name came out of the hat. Training had gone well, but in the final weeks I picked up a calf injury, which curtailed my training. Luckily good physio treatment meant I was able to make it to the start line which was good news as I had also been raising money for two charities close to my heart; Kings College Hospital, who would like to build a helipad, and Silver Lining. Silver Lining provides support and challenges to the members of the group, who have like me, suffered brain injury. Brain injury is invisible and means that I still have problems that only those close family members are aware of.

So, I made a return to the London Marathon six years later, with a goal of 'enjoying' the day with no real target time other than to finish. I got to Tower Bridge at 12 or so miles and was lifted by seeing my wife and children who were standing with the TogetherWeCan charity (that supports King's College Hospital and a few other hospitals). The Canary Wharf area saw me start to suffer from missing training and after leaving that district I then had to use a run/walk strategy for the next three miles. Support from the crowd is incredible, with my name printed on my TogetherWeCan running vest I got countless cries of "you can do it Vince". I started 'running' continually again for the final two miles and eventually finished in 4:27:08.

Different perspective: Yesterday when I was out shopping with my family; I got chatting with the girl who served us in a sports shop, she found out I ran 4:27 for the London marathon: 'that's well good' she said - even though that was by far the slowest I've run a marathon, for once I had to agree!