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D eclaration of interest: I ran what was, I think, my 14th London Marathon last month with the generous support of SEKONDA with whose backing we were able to raise over $10,000 for Children with Cancer this year. Along with the sponsorship, I was also privileged to ‘road test’ the brand-new ACTIVE PRO Smartwatch, just days after its 1 April launch…more about that in a ‘second’… In addition to SEKONDA there were others, but I would like to thank the Board of TFWA which has been extremely generous over the past several years of running this event, as well as many other enterprises, individuals, colleagues and friends in GTR – I will give a shout out to Row Holland of Essential Communications and Martin Moodie of the Moodie Davitt Report. Martin is something of a fellow traveller – having been stricken with this dreaded illness more-or-less at the same time as my young daughter, Brontë, became ill. Poor old ‘Bron’ never made it, but Martin dragged himself from a sick bed many miles to attend her celebration, and I will always be grateful for that. I was a runner years before my daughter became ill, but the Brits have a particular habit of making every marathon and triathlon a charity fund-raiser. When you tell someone you are running the TCS London Marathon, they rarely ask you what time you are going to do – but “who are you running it for?” I have happily jumped on that fundraising bandwagon, but equally I am not precious about what is a good cause – besides cancer, I have run for many disabled groups and others. The reaction of the GTR and aviation industry has been overwhelming – and sometimes surprising. For instance, while Ryanair like to promote their hardness as a ‘king of cheapness’ they have been exceptionally generous over the years writing large cheques for the running events we have been involved in for bone marrow swaps and, most recently, Ukraine. Besides marathons, I co-founded the Budapest Airport Runway Run with the airport’s CCO, Kam Jandu (now the boss of VINCI’s Glasgow Airport). For 10 years this 10km race on Budapest’s 13L/31R runway raised huge sums for disabled and blood cancer groups as the pre-eminent annual aviation sportive. I have given up counting, but the sums raised considerably exceeded $600,000. The opportunity just two weeks ago to run the TCS London Marathon with the new SEKONDA ACTIVE PRO SMARTWATCH marked quite a change for me. I have to be honest and say that I’m one of those terribly lazy people who has never got around to wearing a smartwatch – relying on running with smartphone apps instead. It’s a personal view but bearing in mind the quality and full functionality of this device, I really think that it especially appeals to people like me – someone who does a reasonable about of sport, but was not previously convinced they needed a smartwatch. Monday 12 May 2025 36 T F W A D A I L Y By Paul Hogan, Publisher, TFWA Dailies I road - tes t the new SEKONDA ACTIVE PRO i n the TCS London Marathon