As a father of two young children who lives with migraine, I wanted to challenge myself physically so when I saw there were places available for the London Landmarks Half Marathon, I knew I wanted to support so I signed up as a runner!

I first came across The Migraine Trust two and a half years ago. I attended some webinars to find out about new treatments and was immediately interested in getting involved. I wanted to get involved in fundraising, so I joined The Migraine Trust’s weekly lottery.

My first migraine attack happened when I was 14 years old and in school. My hand and mouth became numb, I had an intense headache, and I didn’t know what was happening. Nowadays, I can go up to six months of not having a migraine attack and then have a period of having migraine symptoms daily.

My symptoms begin with blurry vision, it’s as if glass has shattered and I can’t read things. When this happens, I take painkillers early to manage my symptoms, but I still experience aura. I’m lucky in that if I catch it early enough, I can treat my symptoms with basic painkillers.

Sometimes, my migraine attacks can come on suddenly, for example, when I’m looking after my kids. When this happens, I need to take time out and sit in a dark room. When this occurs, I’ve had to stay in bed for the rest of the day and not interact with anyone.

I realised when I was younger that my mum had migraine too, but I don’t have much memory of mum having migraine attacks. When my son was aged around five or six years old, he experienced his first migraine attack which was quite scary. He said his head hurt, that the pain was getting worse and couldn’t sleep. It was awful to see him go through that pain. Since then, he’s had two or three more migraine attacks and I’m grateful he’s not had many more. I just teach him what works for me, in the hope that I can be there to support him with migraine, particularly as he goes into his teenage years.

I work in private healthcare where I help develop patient pathways with clinical teams. Often, I work from home, and my employer is understanding when I need to step away from my PC for an hour or two. Yet, I try to limit the number of days I take off from work.

Living with migraine has definitely impacted my social life. There have been events I haven’t been able to attend, and I haven’t been able to see people for some time.

There were times during my training for the half marathon that I was going out ready for a run, but my eyes would get blurry and I would feel an aura come on so I didn’t train as much as I should have done. I get stressed trying to work out if my eyes are just blurry or if it really is the onset of aura, and I’ll err on the side of caution, which stopped me training as much.

My advice for anyone taking on a fitness challenge is to be as consistent as possible with training but if you feel unwell – stop. I’m lucky that, for the most part, I’m able to manage my migraine with medication and that allows me to get back in action quickly. Recognising your early migraine symptoms and taking action when needed is important.