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.

The Challenge

Background

In 1981 the Stragglers were founded by a group of like-minded individuals who loved running and particularly running in the company of others.  Since 1981, the Stragglers have become one of the largest clubs in London with the distinctive foot-shaped logo appearing at races and running events all over the UK and across the world.  In 1995, a group of 20 Stragglers organised a continuous running relay from John O'Groats to Land's End over 5 days.  As 2011 will be the 30th anniversary year of the club, we've decided it's time to try and emulate the class of '95, dusting down the relay baton that's been sitting in the Hawker Centre trophy cabinet unloved for so long, and attempt a repeat 'JOGLE' relay over 5 / 6 days in July 2011.  

Why

Quite simply and in the immortal words of the Everest explorer, George Mallory, "Because it's there".  Yes - if you stood still and tried to rationalise it, who on earth would think that running through St. Helens and Wigan at 3am on a Wednesday morning is something that you'd voluntary give a week of your hard-earned holiday up for?  OK, maybe you shouldn't question it too hard, but no-one's going to write on your gravestone that you managed to beat the German guy in the appartment next to you to the sun lounger in your week off down in Marbella are they?

How

20 people running 1 hour shifts on a continuous rotation over 1,000 miles until we reach Land's End.  Further details on the schedule and split of teams in the 'Schedule' page to the side and the selected route is shown in the 'Route' tab (this of course presupposes that runners and supporters have sufficient map-reading skills to follow the designated routes - or at least their Garmins are that capable....)

Who

Like rabbits in the headlights, the motley crew of runners and helpers are in the 'meet the team' tab.

Charity

While for most of us, running a marathon is a feat to bring out the charity cudgel across most of your workmates, the running crew attempting this relay are serial marathon / long distance runners and so feel somewhat unable to repeatedly attack family and friends with charity requests for their latest off-road trail marathon.  However, just once in a while there are events that surpass their usual diet of long distance running and this certainly fits into that category.  As such, the team are raising funds for various charities.  Details of the charities being supported and the reasons for these being selected are in the 'Fundrasing' tab.