Charities are recruiting for Durham Big Ride

Local and national charities are looking to ‘gear up’ for this year’s Durham Big Ride and Beast.

The events, on the first and eighth of September this year, are a great way of charities and worthy causes to get together and raise some money while having a great day out at the same time.

Colin Wilkes, Director of Durham Big Ride believes this is a prime example of the events becoming more and more part of the community in the Durham area: “The Durham Big Ride and Beast are there for everyone to get involved and to become a part of.  Local charities are always looking for fund-raising ideas and with our varied distances, there is a route for all ages and abilities to bring money in for their favourite cause.”

One such cause has already started recruiting for Durham Big Ride on September first.  Rainbow Trust is a national charity that has care teams across the country supporting families of life threatened and terminally ill children. The care team based in Durham supports families across the whole of the North East.

Emily Casson is Fund Raising Manager base in Durham City: “It’s great to be associated with the Durham Big Bike Ride as it is a great way for us to promote what we do to people in this area and to raise vital funds for our work. If you are interested in taking part and want to ride for Rainbow Trust, please get in touch.”

Indeed, one of the charity patrons, Kevin Whitfield, has taken part in the past two Durham Big Rides and will be on the line again this year promoting the cause.
Durham Big Ride does not have a ‘nominated charity’ encouraging riders to raise money for their own personal causes.

“It is great to see Rainbow Trust getting more involved this year” said Colin Wilkes, “and we would encourage other charities to log onto the website to see how they can use this great local event to help them in their efforts.”

For more information on Rainbow Trust and their team, contact Emily Casson 0191 386 4400 and for the Durham Big Ride and Beast, go to the website www.durhambigride.co.uk

Durham Big Ride is on Sunday Sept 1 2013 from County Hall Durham

The Beast is the following Sunday Sept 8 from Sniperley Park and Ride

More information from www.durhambigride.co.uk

RAINBOW TRUST

Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity provides expert social palliative care to families when their child has a life threatening or terminal illness. Offering emotional and practical support, assistance is available for families 24 hours a day.

Rainbow Trust is a national charity with a care team in Durham supporting families across the North East with individually tailored high quality care from diagnosis through to treatment and, should a family become bereaved, the charity will continue to support them for as long as they are needed. Rainbow Trust relies almost entirely on voluntary donations and through the outstanding generosity of its supporters is able to help over 1,300 families a year throughout England. However, this is just 12% of the families that could benefit from its help. The charity’s vision is that one day all terminally ill children and their families will have access to a Rainbow Trust Family Support Worker.

Virgin Money London Marathon 2013

I know, I know,  I should have done this last week but I have been ‘ a bit busy’ with catch up stuff and making sure that my hound knew who I was that I am NOW getting round to putting my Virgin Money London Marathon thoughts down on paper – well on screen!

First I will talk about Boston.  Much has been said about it and in a far better way than I ever could.  We all got to know via twitter and the likes on the Monday night as a lot of the marathon ‘team’ are part o,f and have friends who work on Boston run.

Events like that certainly put things in perspective and made us all work that bit harder and be that little bit more vigilant.  The silent pause before the race was a fitting tribute to Boston and we had three runners who ran Boston on the Green start line with their Boston t-shirts on. One of them was from Newcastle – just goes to show eh!

But the week went as well as they ever do down in VMLM press office with a whole raft of people making sure it is all planned out, leaving the likes of me an easy job of ‘shouting at snappers’ for a few hours and getting the various elite athletes, fancy dress runners and our delightful celebs to smile at the aforementioned snappers.

New people this year included: Andrew Strauss, along with his delightful wife, Kelly Sotherton – who kept saying: ‘It’s a bit different from running a few times round a track!’ and Amy Childs who was very impressive during the press interviews and who really enjoyed the marathon experience.

Among the regulars who were back for another jog round the capital were James Toesen, who knocked around 15mins off his personal best this year, Mike Bushel from BBC sport who was wearing the t-shirt of the TV Times leukemia and lymphoma research charity, made popular by another one of the gang, Tony Audenshaw who again told me he was looking for ‘around 3.30’ and came in around 3.10. Amanda Mealing, who I had the delight to chat to a lot last year was back for more and  it wouldn't be Virgin Money London Marathon without Iwan Thomas supporting, once again, MacMillan Cancer Care.

Race day came and my first job was to make sure Michele Roux Jnr got to the start early for an interview on TV. Although it was his twelfth London marathon (I think) we had never had the time to chat for more than 2 minutes.  Let me say that he is as quiet as he seems on the telly but is a great conversationalist – even at 6.45 in the morning!  One of the things we spoke about, and I can’t remember how it came into conversation, was when his sous chef Monica Galetti saw snow for the first time!

Up at the green start we had our usual ‘gaggle of snappers’ of around 60 and most of them had been at the hotel for photos during the week. They were all there to make the most of the early sunshine and get as many clebs photographed before they got all hot and sweaty doing 26.2 miles on the roads.

All the runners were up for it as well, far too many to mention individually but the  BBC News reading girls all looked as if they had been ‘doing the hard miles’ so they could enjoy the atmosphere of the day.

When the race starts, our team have a 300 metre dash to get to the special buses to get us to the finish as quickly as they can.  Once there we all have a half mile walk up The Mall to get near the finish line to see the wheelchairs and then the elite runners coming across the line.

A while after they elite come though all my ‘friends’ from the Green start come into view.

As said before Jame Toesen did a very respectable time of just over 3 hours with Tony Audenshaw not far behind.  Could go on about them all but it is easier to say that all of them came in over the next few hours – in various states of tiredness, and were more than happy to cross the line as some of the pics show.

That evening all of the media team try and get out for a final meal together before we all go our separate ways. I am just a small cog in the media wheel at the event but the whole team are great to work with and very good company when out in the various bars and restaurants at St Catherine’s Dock.

Happy days until next year.