6 days to go.....

Where did the time go?  Getting very worried now that there is a missing link the size of Lancashire in the preparations.  Hopefully the information booklet I have prepared is sufficiently readable and detailed for everyone to follow, but I guess we'll find out along the way......

Anyway, many important decisions to be made during the week none more so than the team selecting their starters, mains and desserts for the celebration meals in Inverness and Penzance.  Here's hoping for some serious downpours this week for the air to clear for a perfectly dry 9 days thereafter.

Below is one of the pitcures taken after Bushy parkrun yesterday.  A more capable bunch of runners for a 1,000 mile relay event you could not have selected!

PS  Thanks to Bushy parkrun for the support, particularly Ray Coward for announcing the Stragglers Jogle event and allowing us to start Bushy parkrun and hand out leaflets at the end advertising our event!

SMS to donate - Accepting Text donations now!

Fundraising has gone through the £ 5,000 mark now and we have just set up a text donation service through Just Giving (Virgin Money Giving don't support this currently).  100% of all SMS donations will go to Macmillan Cancer Care.

Separately we're finalising the car livery designs and the cars will be seriously pimped up with Stragglers JOGLE livery.  Evan sent through the designs yesterday and I measured them on my car and I don't even have large enough side panels for the versions we were proposing.  Scaled down versions are being marked up, but that just gives us more space for our 2sq m of printed stickers to go elsewhere on the cars.  We'll certainly be noticed for the 10 days of the trip!!

Flyer below for the SMS donation information.

Just over 2 weeks to go......

I'm sure I've forgotten something, just can't put my finger on what yet.....

Really beginning to feel that this is actually going to happen now with only 2 weeks to go.  Running tops are supposed to be arriving tomorrow and Evan has done a great job with the proposed vehicle livery for the trip (images below).  Should look good for the 10 hour trip up to Inverness (although pretty much anything would improve the looks of my Nissan Note......).

Beating Bushy Bounds on Saturday evening when hopefully we'll get a good JOGLE team turnout all in the resplendent new kit.......

Feels a bit more real now......

Just back from another JOGLE meeting and it feels distinctly more real now with most of the group in attendance and having gone through the route in detail together with the scheduling of teams, accommodation etc.  Fortunately no-one with any major injury scares at the moment - fingers crossed it stays that way for the next 7 weeks.....

Lastly, some more nice artwork from Evan below - get fundraising everyone!

VLM results for JOGLErs - 6 finishers

So here they are in their full glory - all 6 of them in addition to the 3 other marathon finishers that we have had already this year from the JOGLE team.  Peter Kennedy must have had a tough second half looking at the splits. Meanwhile this must have been a breeze for Ingrid and David with all of their training at the moment:  This wasn't even half way for their Comrades Marathon next month.................

                             Half                         Full
Allan Barrie           1:23:17                    2:55:46
Vince Howley       1:36:46                    3:14:57
Peter Dry              1:38:41                    3:20:20

Peter Kennedy      1:30:11                    3:24:46

David Venter         1:46:36                    3:55:54

Ingrid Wagner       2:01:11                    4:11:57

Marathon Results - with more to come at the weekend

Prior to this weekend's London Marathon where we have Peter Dry, Allan Barrie (I think??) Ingrid Wagner & David Venter all (unofficially) representing the Stragglers JOGLE relay team, we have so far (as far as I am aware) had two marathon finishers for 2011 in Andrew Lane (Brighton) and Kristin Simmers (Sussex).  

Andrew Lane - Brighton - (3:16:11)

Peter Wedderburn - Brighton - (4:05:15)
Kristin Simmers - Sussex Coastal Trail Series - (5:31:57)

Go JOGLE!

Perfect weather for first official team photo roll call

The motley crew is shaping up now and we even managed to get most of the team out for the Stragglers / Ranelagh Harriers mob match at Kingston parkrun.  The sun was up and there were some great runs by the team with Roy, Ingrid, Allan and me all recording our best ever age graded parkrun performances.  Unfortunately we'll be running more than 5k each in July.......

15 of the team below:

And this time with a somewhat reluctant Peter Dry who was picked summonsed from the coffee queue.....

Just need to cross our collective fingers for the team to stay injury free for the next three months which, given the schedule for the likes of David and Ingrid who (before July) are taking in the London Marathon, the Comrades ultra 56 miler and a 'warmup' 50km event sandwiched between the two, is more of a challenge than your average group of 20 people........

We have a web-page and moving accommodation.....

Just in case we didn't have enough online presence, we have now brought all of our various web-pages together in a central page which is looking pretty good (thanks Evan for the design!).  Check it out here:

http://www.stragjogle.co.uk/


I also received an e-mail today from the Scottish Youth Hostel Association advising me that they have decided to completely renovate one of the hostels that we were due to be staying in and so 8 of us have (hopefully temporarily) been made homeless for one of the nights of the event.  Sorry for any of you who were looking forward to staying in the somewhat grand looking Carbisdale Castle during the event:  Looks like a gaping hole in the roof and inclement weather has put paid to this being an overnight stop.  Oh well - isn't sleeping considered cheating during this event in any case??

20 Runners confirmed

Finally we've got a full team of confirmed runners with Stragglers men's captain Roy Reeder coming on board and deciding that he should be able to hack the sleep deprivation.  We have though recently lost our treasurer, Andrew Lane, as he has succumbed to a family wedding in Leeds on the Friday of the JOGLE event.  Fortunately though he tells me that he hasn't absconded with the team's funds and will continue to manage the teams financial affairs and I've even managed to drag out an 'Andrew replacement' in the far more attractive guise of new Straggler, Kristin Simmers, who has been added to the 'meet the team' page.  Kristin hails from the US and adds an additional continent to the already represented continents of Europe, Africa, Australasia and Wales amongst the JOGLE team crew.......

Anyway, back to the map-making.......

Charities have been selected and fundraising has started

With mixed emotions, I can announce that we have finally decided on the charities that the Stragglers JOGLE 2011 team relay are going to support.  These are as follows:

1. Macmillan Cancer Support (70%)
2. YMCA London South West (15%)
3. The National Centre for Young People with Epilepsy (15%)

For information on why we have selected these charities, please go the Charity Fundraising page.  

I say mixed emotions as having a fundraising page, announcing it to friends and family and getting sponsorship for the event makes it feel somewhat more real.  Until now, this has been a bit of a pet project for which there was always the ultimate get-out if we couldn't raise sufficient numbers of runners / interest.  However now it's definitely going ahead and I'm going to have to actually put some decent maps together.

For those of you interested in sponsoring us, please click here for our fundraising page.  All donations are very much appreciated and are going to very worthy causes.  


Here's hoping our 19 confirmed runners stay injury free over the next 5 months.........

19 Runners Confirmed. Accommodation and Travel all Booked

Apologies as there has been some confusion over the dates of the event.  This is simply due to my inability to match up days of the week with calendar dates.  The final confirmed dates for the JOGLE tour are from Saturday, 16 July to Sunday, 24 July 2011 (including travel days) with the running taking place from 1pm on Sunday 17 July to (hopefully) around 11am on Saturday 23 July.   Please ignore any date references in the promotional video in the previous blog last August.

Anyway, the accommodation and travel are now all booked with details of the proposed accommodation on the accommodation tab.  We have 19 of the 20 person team confirmed so just seeking one additional runner at this stage.  The full list of runners is below:

1.       James Flood

2.       Andrew Lane

3.       Ian Callander

4.       Paul Graham

5.       Vince Howley

6.       Peter Dry

7.       Allan Barrie

8.       Hilary Hilhouse

9.       Cathy Davis

10.   Lucille Flood 

11.   Peter Wedderburn

12.   Nigel Rothwell

13.   Peter Kennedy

14.   Ingrid Wagner

15.   David Venter

16.   Geoff Miles

17.   Graham Brook (pseudonym)

18.   Steve Sandham

19.   Trevor Ford

We are having a meeting for the runners and anyone else interested in the event on Saturday, 29 January immediately after Kingston parkrun at the Hawker Centre.  Please join if you can.