AFTER her husband contracted meningitis at the age of 40 that left him deaf it wasn't difficult to choose a cause to raise money for.

Last year Sarah Samways ran her first London Marathon and raised more than £2,500 for Meningitis Now and she's hoping to do the same this year.

Sarah, 43, director of Samways Fish Merchants, said: "Anyone who knows me will know why I run for Meningitis NOW.

"Clive contracted this dreadful killing disease in 2007, it came like a bolt out of the blue and knocked the whole family for six.

"Unlike so many others who contract it Clive is one of the lucky ones who survived, it has left him deaf, but maybe that is a small consequence to pay.

"I ran last year and raised over £2500 so this year not only is the target to beat this, now I have to aim to beat my time as well."

Last year she ran the course in 4hours 18 minutes.

She said she wasn't sure if she'd be running another marathon in the future.

She said: "In 2006 Clive fractured his skull skiing and in Easter 2007 he contracted pneumococcal septicaemia.

"We'd been used to the headaches because of the fractured skull. We were watching rugby on the Saturday and he had a headache and it continued to get worse. Then on the Sunday he was so bad we had to take him to hospital and he was in intensive care for a week.

"He was 40 when he got it. I don't think anybody generally thinks about meningitis at that age."

She said the last six weeks of training have been tough and Sarah vowed she'd never to another full marathon

"It is just the amount of training time in the last six weeks. You have to run for three hours, it is time-consuming.

"At this point I feel I am missing it but it depends on Sunday goes."

Anybody who wants to contribute to Sarah's efforts can do so via the virginmoneygiving.com website search sarahjanesamways.

A reminder to all our west Dorset marathon runners - send us in your pictures to news@bridportnews.co.uk and tell us how you did.