Running on behalf of Children With Cancer in 2025

Fundraising in 2023

I started 2023 by downloading the Couch to 5K app, that quickly snowballed into running a 10k, and then eventually a half marathon. I used to run a long time ago, but I have been out of shape for a while. I ran my first 5k (since restarting) at SQLBits:

And then I ran my first 10k at the Race for Life event in Cardiff in July, I finished the year by running the Cardiff Half Marathon in October.

To incentivise the runs, I decided to raise funds for charity. My family also ran races at the Race for Life - my wife ran the 5k and my daughters did the pretty muddy. We raised £750 for Cancer Research UK!!

And I raised £430 for Mind, a mental health charity that is fighting for the mental health of people in England and Wales, at the Cardiff Half.

Stressful

I did however, find raising the money for Mind a little stressful. I took a charity place at the Cardiff Half, which is a reduced entry fee in exchange for raising a minimum amount of money for charity. As well as the stress of the responsibility to raise the money in time, it felt slightly awkward asking people for money through social media, especially after everyone had been so awesome just a few months earlier donating to the Cancer Research UK fundraiser.

But really the main stress came in the weeks leading up to the race, about three weeks out, I pulled up whilst running with really bad bad shin splints to the point where I had to slow my run to a walk and then rest for 10 days before the race. It was a bit of a nightmare because here I was not sure I could run, and I had all these people who had helped me hit my target and raised an awesome amount of money for Mind. I was really worried that I would let them down. The week leading up to the race I did a bit of light running and my shin felt okay, fortunately on the day my shin was fine and I managed to run the whole race and almost hit my original target time, I beat my revised target time though which I set because of the injury.

No fundraising in 2024

I decided to concentrate on running in 2024, and importantly for my long term running health, a lot of conditioning and strength training. I am simply concentrating on running consistently, but if I get issues, I will stop and rest so that meant I didn’t want to commit to fundraising at races. I did however, regret not fundraising partway through the year and I was intending to start fundraising during 2024 but I had issues with my knee and achilles so my running was a bit stop start (punny) and I didn’t want to commit to fundraising I couldn’t complete. Hopefully things will be better in 2025 because…

Running for Children with Cancer in 2025

My plan to remove the individual race stress is to pick a charity at the start of the year and fundraise for them throughout the year. In fact, both Ryan and I have discussed the idea of fundraising and decided we would pick a charity as our company charity of the year. We have decided to pick Children with Cancer UK, a charity that is dedicated to raising money to fund research and help other families living through Cancer. Their mission:

to see a world where every child and young person survives cancer and to ensure that children with cancer has the best possible chance of survival, with access to the best possible care and support, regardless of their economic situation or where they live in the UK.

Beautiful.

My race calendar for 2025

And so with a charity picked, I now have to fill up my running calendar! I have run a few half marathons over the last 18 months and so I decided that 2025 is going to be the year that I take on a marathon. The one that I have targeted is the Marathon Eryri (Snowdonia) which is held in October. It’s a tough marathon that circles Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon). It should be an amazing race to do but I need to enter a ballot to get a place and I won’t know until early next year.

I also missed out on a place in the Cardiff Half in 2025 so I’m going to take the opportunity to tick off the Run4Wales 4 Castle series. I absolutely love running the Cardiff Half, one of the legs of the castle series clashes with it, so missing out on the Cardiff Half is a bit of a silver lining.

So at the moment, my calendar looks like this:

My fundraising target

I raised £1180 in 2023, I am going to try and beat that in 2025 and so my target for the year is £1,500. It’s a big number but I am confident I can do it. I have just launched my JustGiving page. Please consider sponsoring me and supporting this amazing charity.