Fundraising

As it's now only 4 weeks until the Brighton marathon it's time to ramp up my fundraising efforts.

 Firstly, a big thank you to everyone who has sponsored me so far - I really appreciate your support, especially since many of you have sponsored me in previous years. Practical Action and CLIC Sargent, like most charities, depend heavily on donations to support their work and they are very grateful for your help. In the current economic climate everyone is tightening their belts and charitable donations are one of the first items which people look to minimise, so many charities are really struggling to maintain their activities.

As well as asking my long-suffering friends and families for sponsorship, this year I am also looking to large corporations to donate. So far I've asked the chief executives of three organisations for support - Sainsbury's, United Biscuits and Marks and Spencer. I received a polite email from Sainsbury's outlining all of the charitable activities they support and saying they were unable to support me at this time - but nothing as yet from M&S or United Biscuits. I have had one anonymous donation so far though so I'll be charitable and say that perhaps this came from one of those companies.

I don't expect to have much success via this route as most companies already have specific charities they support at a corporate level and probably receive hundreds of requests from their own staff and from random people like me every year. However, I plan to carry on this approach - "if you don't ask you don't get", and I've also been asking if they have any promotional items they might consider donating as prizes for a raffle / quiz night I might organise later in the year.

This week's running consisted of a couple of lunchtime trips to Dulwich for 5 and 8 mile runs, and a 4 mile run back from the garage after I dropped my car off for its MoT, plus 12 miles in Greenwich yesterday - bringing my total for February to 64 miles and for the year to 271.5 miles. I've had a bit of a cold for the last couple of weeks so haven't been feeling 100% when I've been out running, and my knee is still giving me a bit of pain, but since after this weekend's last "long slow run" of 20 miles my training plan moves into the "taper" towards the race, that'll give my body a bit of a chance to recover.