BY LIZ CROSS
Before Christmas, I came clean in my blog ‘Confessions of a fundraiser’ and admitted that I hadn’t fulfilled my promise of personally fundraising for Viva’s work in 2017. I also pledged to do better the coming year by taking up running… Here’s an update.
In February, my mystery friend who was responsible for persuading me to run alongside him for Viva (and who last Christmas was also persuaded to host a fundraising party on my behalf) turned in to my fiancé! Obviously that has nothing to do with any of his fundraising efforts…
Two months later, he got me to stick to my promise and we signed up to run a 10K (usually the fundraising persuading is the other way around!). The only problem was that the run was five weeks away and I had only completed my first 5K a few days before – and I spent most of the Park Run complaining how I wasn’t going to make it!
When we started our training, I didn’t have much confidence that we would be prepared in time but with a couple of weeks of hard work and perseverance, I was amazed at how far we had come. In no time, we had completed 7K and I knew we could do it!
The fundraising started to go as well as the training. We put a few posts on Facebook and people were amazed that their non-sporty friend Liz was actually running! And with a standard PS going on all our emails the donation total was creeping up.
But then disaster struck… A week before the event, whilst running my first 10K, I sprained my ankle. It just suddenly started hurting and the next day I couldn’t put any weight on it.
The Viva team waited on me hand and foot (no pun intended) with trips to buy frozen peas and ibuprofen gel with the hope that I would help me recover on time. I soon learnt that ‘RICE’ in this situation didn’t refer to long grain or basmati like I originally thought…
One week later I was walking but still in pain and sadly I had to make the decision to pull out of the race. I was disappointed not to be able to take part after working so hard and being quite excited to achieve something I hadn’t thought I could do just a few months before.
However, our sponsors have kindly reminded me that I have technically completed a 10K and it was more important that I looked after myself. And they challenged Andy, my fiancé, to try twice as hard for both of us!
A few days later, Andy completed the 10K with his personal best – 49:39. I was there at the start line to see him off and (most importantly!) to participate afterwards in the celebratory breakfast!
We can now say that we have done our 2018 Viva fundraiser but I have to make the confession… I didn’t quite complete it as planned…
Liz Cross is Viva’s Supporter Care Co-ordinator
