My goal is to find and complete a total of ten marathons by the time I reach 40 in late September. The good news is that I'm now halfway through with five down, five to go and a whole five and a half months left to tick off the remainder of my personal list.

I freely admit that this is not a spectacular achievement and pales into insignificance when measured against true feats of athleticism. For instance, I am not running a marathon a day for seven days in different continents, nor am I climbing Everest or cycling from Lands End to John O'Groats dressed as a Giant Tomato. Maybe I can do one of these next year..!!

What makes this personal challenge a bit more, well, challenging is that I've left it so late and to achieve the goal will mean I will have run eight marathons within a 10-month period. I guess this makes it seem a bit tougher, particularly given my fairly hectic work schedule and the fund-raising for the Anthony Nolan Trust, which I hope will make the effort worthwhile.

Marathon Number 5 on my list was last Sunday - not London, but Tresco on the beautiful Isles of Scilly. This was a tough 26.2 mile jaunt with over 7 laps of the island necessary to make up the distance and some 28 hills to negotiate. I am a little undecided on the next marathon and think that this will be a little closer to home. Watch this space or visit the website www.tenthingsforty.co.uk for details.

You can follow the link from the website to my online giving page or directly at www.justgiving.com/stuartwickham All money raised will go towards helping the Anthony Nolan Trust's work in enabling bone marrow transplants to reclaim lives back from leukaemia.

This is something of a mid-life crisis thing and regular readers of the challenge website will know a little more about the motivation behind "10 Things..". In a nutshell, it relates to a goal I set myself at the time of my first marathon, London 1999.

I suppose it is typical me - the self-proclaimed Last Minute Man - to be posting my first blog entry for "10 Things to do Before You're 40" halfway through, but another case of so much to do, so little time.

However, I do hope that you will follow the story through to it's conclusion in September.