100 days and counting….

Time sure does sneak up fast …. unbelievably there are just 100 days to go before I slip on my running shoes to tackle Day One of the 7in7 Challenge 2010 (The Twin Lakes Marathon). Ahead will lie 360kms of rough, tough trail running through stupendous southern lakes scenery and who knows what kind of weather and other unforeseen hurdles.

So a good time to take stock of where I have got to after several months of hard work:…..

One of my key goals for this year was of course to encourage lots of ordinary people to take a step out of their comfort zones and join me on one or more days of this mad odyssey. So it is very gratifying to have received almost 100 ‘registrations of interest’ that have come in from all corners of NZ and even USA, UK, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia!

So far 45 of these support runners are set up with their own fundraising pages and getting stuck in to the real business – looking for people to sponsor them and so help towards the Big Hairy Audacious Goal of raising $150,000 for the Leukaemia & Blood Foundation. To see the full list of these wonderful folk click here – and if you recognise any of the names please consider a small donation to encourage them as they face yet another wet & cold winter training run!

With 100 days to go my own training has been a little patchy, due to a few injuries and the pressure of that old enemy, Time. But I’ve knocked out some 1,500 kms of hard trail running already, with a similar amount planned over the next 3 months – yes, if you’re any good at maths you’ll hvae figured that means average training weeks of well over 100 kms! That all kicks off in earnest this weekend with 2 x50 km runs planned in the wet, gnarly and never-endingly hilly Waitakere Ranges, just out of Auckland. Fortunately though I have the company of a great bunch of people who are also training for their part in this year’s Challenge.

To date we have raised just over $12,000 and the total creeps a little closer to the target each day. While the thought of needing another $138,000 seems daunting I remain confident because I know there is so much popular support for what we, a team of maybe 100 people, are running ourselves ragged for. Huge thanks once again to all of you out there who are supporting us in so many important ways.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 20th, 2010 at 2:59 am and is filed under News, Training and tagged with Fundraising, Support runners, Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.