First post-race run HELL!!!!

M

Two - both in 1984!

Earlier this year I set myself a goal of raising £20k for Hope for Children by completing the 2004 London Marathon in under 4:22.

Why 2004 not 2003 I hear you asking, given that he's been prattling on at me to go for it?
- 20th anniversary of my other runs (London & Berlin)
- 10th anniversary of founding of HOPE
- it was a big step into the unknown and I wanted a conservative goal (I now firmly believe I could do 2003 in under 4:22 - 10 min mile for 26.2 miles - but will need at least another year for all the fundraising things I wanted to do).

(If you have doubts - I remember an item in the old forum where someone had seen a local news item where a woman entering FLM 2002 was reported as saying that she had got up to 8 miles in training for it!)

Nick

Thanks for all your encouragement - I am going to give it some serious consideration.

What does the charity do?

£20K is very impressive - good luck with that. 2004 sounds like a good year for you with all those anniversaries to spur you on.

M

HOPE supports lots of small projects around the world (inc a few in the UK). The thing I like about the charity is that they fill in the gaps that other larger schemes can't cover. So, for example, they support schemes that help say 6 mothers in a village to set up a micro enterprise in Sri Lanka and a place in Zambia (from memory) that has places for a dozen kids to get them off the streets. The Oxfams/Save the Childrens do brilliant work on large projects but sometimes can't get to help people who fall between schemes - HOPE tries to plug some of those gaps working with local projects rather than competing with them.

Its amazing how little it costs to make a real difference in some of these projects (£3 to provide the equipment to allow a street kid to attend school for a term).

Why not have a browse round
www.hope-for-children.org.uk

I will have a browse - sounds like a great charity.

Thanks
Have a good weekend
M