Sponsorship - can anyone help Colin

[Admin]

Colin made a request offline - I decided it is a suitable post


[e-mail] - Jan


Dear Jan,
I am writing to you because I don't know whether the details below are either of any interest or appropriate for the history web site, I leave you to judge. The ramble is for your information only. I am reticent about asking for help, never having done anything like this before.

Firstly, my grandson is disabled, he is now 5 years old. When he was born, Coventry Hospital was unable to offer him the life support backup he needed and he was rushed the 50 odd miles to the Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. My daughter and son in law lived down there for a while until he was out of danger and out of intensive care. We looked after our granddaughter. He needed full time oxygen for a couple of years, plus ongoing treatment. As a family we raised a couple of thousand pounds for the hospital, doing a family cycle ride from Coventry to Oxford when he was three year old (camping on the way!!)

Now I am going to run the London Marathon to raise money for a couple of Charities that help disabled children, Tiny Tims which gives free physiotherapy to disabled children and Newlife which provides equipment. I have run marathons in the past at representative level, not as a fund raiser.

Now to the point. I have set up a blog
colinkirkhamslondonmarathontrudge.blogspot.com
which may give members a smile?

The point of interest is that I am giving away my finisher's medal, my t-shirt, my kit bag etc. to those who guess nearest to my finishing time. £1 per guess to Just Giving/Tiny Tims or Just Giving /Newlife
I'll be back up in Keighley next week, so if you see a senile white hared gentleman shuffling slowly along the road, giveusatoot!
I shall not be the slightest put out if you think it out of order for the site.

Colin

[julesfarthing]

Hi cousin Colin, I'll see what my piggy bank says and I will be in touch!
Jules (Juliette)

[julesfarthing]

I forgot to say, the blog is brilliant and funny, worth a read!
Jules

[harrier]

With the London marathon imminent, I feel I should expand on my note. My reason for running in the marathon is only partly to raise some funds; something I have never done before. The other reason being to see if I still could do it! I was told that all respected fund raisers had a ‘blog’!! I had never read a blog and still haven’t! I didn’t know what a blog was so I invented my own format. The idea of my blog was quite simply to attempt to give a smile to those interested enough to log on. What on earth readers in Belerus, Mexico, India, Russia, China, etc make of it, I dread to think. I only hope that these regulars are not using the blog to improve their English! I am big in Denmark! I have raised about £1000 for the two children’s charities so far; Both provide free facilities for disabled children. To have a read, you certainly don’t have to sponsor. It is supposed to be for a smile. However for a real laugh .... next time you see a white haired old pensioner with a Zapata ‘tash trudging slowly round the streets of Keighley, (or walking up the steep bits) give me a shout. I still visit the town regularly as my family still live in the area.

[harrier]

It is about time that I gave some feed back to my London Marathon effort to raise money for two children’s charities for disabled children. The final total will be about £1600, far more than the anticipated £500 I set out to raise as I had no intention of soliciting sponsorship. I had an athletic club place, so all money raised went to the charities. It was not a case of spending a few hundred pounds just to get a race place, which I consider to be a little immoral! As I was running for my own interest, the charities were just a tack on. Keighley area raised about £50 in guesses at my final time and one local sponsor came within 1 second of winning my medal ... the embarrassing part being that that person was my sister!!!!!! Still it was all good fun and did raise a few bob!! My blog is (colinkirkhamslondonmarathontrudge.blogspot.com) still up and operating as a dribble of sponsor money is still coming in. It seems a shame to close it down just yet if some disabled children can benefit from a few extra pounds. What on earth some of the regular readers from abroad (China, Russia, Brazil, Ukraine, India, Germany, France, Norway, Italy, Austria ... never mind the English speaking countries around the world) make of my ‘humour’, I dread to think. I only hope they are not using my blog to help them improve their English! I wonder if they even understand what is going on, the underlying references are sometimes rather oblique!!!! For those who have had a read it, I do hope you don’t feel you have wasted too much of your time. Thank you to Jan for allowing me the space to highlight my effort. Over and out.
Colin

[anorak]

I've just spotted this post.
Does anyone else on the forum realise that 'harrier' competed for GB in the 1972 Munich Olympic games marathon, and finished in the top 20 !!
One of Keighley's finest ever sportsmen.

[harrier]

The fund is all but closed with £1800 ... can hardly believe the amount. Split up:- £800 to Newlife and £1000 to Tiny Tims Children's Centre. I will keep the blog going for a bit longer because it continues to expand with regular readers from around the world. I seem to get a new country each week, sometimes with more than one regular reader sometimes just one regular. I assume that the readers must have athletic related interests ... it isn't supposed to make much sense in athletic terms, so for none athletes, it must be a complete load of codswallop??? Hope it gives a smile anyway.