Golfers take on 24-hour challenge to raise money for Middlesbrough man with MND
It starts tomorrow
A large group of golfers is set to tackle a huge fundraising challenge for a Middlesbrough man who has Motor Neurone Disease.
Starting tomorrow, they are going to play 18-hole courses in each of Scotland, Wales and England - all within 24 hours.
It is to raise money and awareness for the Dean Fox Foundation. He was diagnosed with MND in August last year.
Dan Sumner, one of the organisers, said: "Logistically it's a challenge but also mentally and physically it's a challenge as well and obviously with what happened to Dean, it just kind of brought everything together and we thought 'you know what? Let's do this because, yes, it'll be a gruelling 24-hours for us on the road, on the course, on our legs and it just pales in insignificance compared to what Dean and Christine are going through at the moment.
"We officially start the clock when we hit the first tee shot in Lockerbie in Scotland and that's at 5am. As soon as we've finished, we'll go down to North Wales to the Vale of Llangollen where we have a little hotel where we're just going to get our heads down, we're then are up to hit the first ball at around sunrise. As soon as we finish that, we're then soon back up to Preston Golf Club.
"For Dean to still be mentally there, for him to still want to do all the normal things but his body not letting him it really is heartbreaking, just to see the deterioration in his speech and I know Dean's a life coach, business coach and motivational speaker so he's still trying to do that via his social media platforms but you can jsut see as time progresses that this awful disease is taking a hold of him.
"If we can do anything along the way to providing awareness of MND and get some funds to ultimately just to try and get a cure. What we're doing is just small potatoes compared to what people like Kevin Sinfield has done, but ultimately that's what needs to happen bcause more and more people are being diagnosed with MND."