John Piears

John Piears was born in Minehead, Somerset in 1966. After leaving school and completing a degree in Computer Science in Middlesbrough, he went on to work for British Gas and its parent company Centrica in the South East. He married his first wife in 1995 and had two children. His career progressed into various management roles and in 1998 he was selected to work as Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive of Centrica, where he became involved with Centrica’s acquisition of The AA . Following the acquisition John moved into The AA to work as a General Manager, initially with responsibility for its traffic and travel information business but subsequently to run its national AA Driving School and Road Signs businesses. John left The AA following its sale in 2005 and decided to pursue a completely new direction. He set about learning how to develop and manage websites and went on to create a new online service for runners called the Good Run Guide, which later grew to become the UK’s leading independent running website.

John interest in the outdoors spurred him on to set a mid-life challenge and in 2009 John completed a 630 mile walk along the South West Coast Path, walking for 42 consecutive days.

In 2010 John’s separated from his wife following a 20 year relationship and perhaps unusually for the father, he stayed on in the family home to bring up his two teenage children after the divorce. A year later, John met his current wife Beata and his life took a positive turn once again. But their happiness was cruelly snatched way when Beata was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer just one year after they met.

John went on to develop another new web business called plotaroute.com, which he launched in 2014 and in March 2015 John and Beata married. Sadly Beata lost her battle with cancer in October 2015 and John's time is now split between looking after his children, running his website business and campaigning for change in the cancer industry.