AB2U Blog

By: Dianne Beer

Well I hope you all made the most of the beautiful sunny weather yesterday, especially as it vanished again by late afternoon. But on Sunday morning at 10.30am as the starter horn blew to commence the BUPA Great Capital Run 2008, 10k, the sun was shining down from the heavens and it was a glorious day, just perfect for a run around Hyde Park.

It was probably not our best run for both Kathryn and I. Kathryn has a slight ankle injury which she is therefore nursing very carefully until it gets better and I went bounding off as if my life depended on it, only to feel totally and utterly exhausted by about 5k and drop to half the pace, but as always we both finished! And every time you run over that finish line, with all the crowds cheering there is the most amazing feeling of jubilation!

It was a lovely course, running around the Serpentine, and past all the wonderful array of bird life, from swans to herons – totally beautiful. I quite often train in Hyde Park on a Sunday morning, and normally it is the most peaceful place in the world, so I am sure this Sunday all the wildlife wondered what was happening as a stampede of 10,000 runners came charging past, destroying the tranquillity…

There were the usual water stations, but I particularly loved to idea of the ‘cool down’ spray tunnel for those runners not enjoying the sun as much as others and about to overheat, or big kids like me who just have to try new things.

To view some photos of the day, please click here.

I would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to Mary, Karen, Andy, Jacqueline, Kate, Mum & Dad for sponsoring this event and ensuring that we exceeded our £100 race target yet again, and achieved £110 in sponsorship towards Help a London Child! And a couple of quick thank you’s to Kathryn’s lovely friends giving me words of encouragement to try and run sub 50 minutes, which sadly on this occasion I failed (54 minutes!), but there is always next time… I would also like to thank Oliver for getting up early enough to spectate and cheer us on, having flown over from Germany the day before.

It is over a month until our next run, which gives us plenty of time to both get fit and fully prepared for the next challenge… The Nike ‘Human Race’ 10k, at Wembley Stadium, on Sunday 31st August, commencing at 7.00pm after the live concert at 5.00pm. On this occasion we are raising money for WWF. Please click here to help us reach out £100 target!

In the meantime, keep fit and healthy everyone and thank you as always for reading our blog and your kind donations.

Dianne and Kathryn at Abenefit2u and on behalf of HALC, Help a London Child.

By: Dianne Beer

We never did catch Bill Turnbull, but we found Nikki Grahame from Big Brother…

…who was lost and trying to find the Marie Curie After Party, so we took her under our wing, literally she is adorably petite, and showed her the way. This was Nikki’s first ever race (go to www.specialnikkigrahame.com for more details), which she finished in roughly 1 hour and 14 minutes, which I think deserves a round of applause for a ‘first ever’. Kathryn and I both had similar success and crossed the line in under 1 hour, despite an extremely slow start which was to be expected with 24,000 runners competing.

Thank you to Marie Curie Cancer Care for organising the after party, (and our lovely Goodie Bags). It is great to have somewhere for runners to all congregate after the race, to relax and change out of ‘wet’ clothes! Yes, it did rain, but only a little and it certainly did not dampen Abenefit2u’s team spirit!

Bill Turnball was apparently right at the start of the race and as it took us 10 minutes to get to the start line after the first runners had crossed it, I don’t think we ever stood a chance of catching him, and when we heard he had left just 5 minutes before we arrived at the after party we knew it was not to be. There is always next year Bill…

We would also like to say a BIG thank you to Remzi, my spin instructor and good friend who was our AB2U blog photographer for the day, risking life and limb and imprisonment by standing on a lamp post painted with ‘anti climb paint’ to get the best shot. However, a very friendly policeman entered into the spirit of the event and let him rest a hand on his shoulder to take some shots of the runners passing down below.

We have posted all the photographs from before, during and after the run on our flickr account, please click here to view them.

Our biggest thanks of all go to the five sponsors who picked this race to show their support and enabled us to achieve not just our £100 target, but £110.00 on behalf of Marie Curie Cancer Care.

We are now one third of the way to our end of year target of £1,000, and by the end of the year Abenefit2u’s charity exploits will have raised money for over 20 different charities!

That’s all for this blog folks, so until our next race in just two weeks time ‘The Great Capital Run’, Hyde Park, on Sunday 20th July 2008, I am off… don’t blink or you will miss me!

By Dianne Beer

Abenefit2u cannot wait to take part in this event, we get to plant a sapling!

At the end of the race every runner receives a sapling to take home and plant, encouraging everyone to “give something back to their local environment and create their own green space.”

Possibly easier said than done when you live on the top floor of a house and have no actual land to plant on, but where there is a will there is a way… My lovely friend Kaline moves to the UK shortly and will be moving into a flat with a large communal garden. Weather permitting we are going to have a ‘Plant a Sapling Picnic’ on the Sunday after the race to make sure we do our bit to make London greener.

How you can help?

This year Trees for Cities need help to create a beautiful wildlife garden for kids at a South London school, plant street trees for the people of East London to enjoy and plant trees in London woodlands to encourage wildlife into our city. So by sponsoring Abenefit2u for this race those of you who work in this area could be strolling past a tree in a few years that your sponsorship helped plant and grow… a lovely thought to carry to work on a cold frosty winter morning or hot summer evening.

To sponsor us for this event, please click here.

Why not come and join us?

There will be lots of prizes up for grabs on the day and the village fête atmosphere including picnicking, entertainers and stalls means it’s a great day out for all the family, so why not come and support us?

About the charity ‘Trees for Cities’

Trees for Cities is an independent charity working to improve the environment in urban areas by involving local people in community tree planting, training and landscaping projects.

Trees for cities manage projects across London, in Brighton, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, the Midlands and Reading as well as internationally in Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Ica, Peru. Some of the ways they have helped over the past year internationally include setting up reforestation projects in Peru, the planting of fruiting trees in Ethiopia and funding forestry courses for women in Kenya to teach them how to preserve and protect their local environment.

All their community greening projects are supported by extensive community consultation and involvement programmes that incorporate local residents, schools and community groups. As well as educating local people about their projects, in London they also run a series of horticulture, arboriculture and woodland management courses specialising in developing and up-skilling the long-term unemployed.

Thanks to the support of last year’s runners, Trees for Cities has been able to plant hundreds of trees across the community projects in needy urban areas. In London this included street tree planting projects in Brixton, Brent and Tower Hamlets, the creation of a wildlife garden at Langdon Park Secondary School in Tower Hamlets, the total rejuvenation of the LamSom Playground in Lambeth from a dingy car park into a colourful haven for children, and planting on open spaces on the Bow Bridge, Stockwell Gardens and Studley Estates.

To find out more about Trees for Cities, please visit their website: http://www.treesforcities.org/

Thank you in anticipation,

on behalf of Dianne and Kathryn at Abenefit2u and Trees for Cities.

On the 31st August 2007, Nike will host The Human Race 10K, a series of 10km road races in 25 cities around the world, including London. A million runners will take part worldwide!

We keep asking you all to join us on any of our events and thank you to those of you that have been coming along and cheering us on. Your support is always very much appreciated.
For this race you might be fighting for places as each runner is allowed to invite two spectators to the pre-race concert at Wembley Stadium.

The race starts at Wembley Station at 7.00pm.
Doors to Wembley Stadium will open at 5.00pm.
At 5.45pm the first live performance will start.
At 7.10pm the first runners will start, in timed waves. All waves will leave at 30 minute intervals after this. Abenefit2u have registered for the second wave.

The exclusive pre-race sets are from Moby, Pendulum and Carl Craig. Abenefit2u can bring up to two guests per runner to join them and watch the performance and then cheer us on once we start…
Spectator tickets are £10 each. We have purchased four of these (the maximum allowed) and they are now waiting to be grabbed! But of course those of you who are first to sponsor us for this event will be given priority! Didn’t you just know I would be dangling a carrot at you yet again!

As Abenefi2u have paid for the tickets already we would much prefer you to put the cost of your ticket as part of your donation than give it directly to us. The more money to charity the better!

For more information on the race, please click here.

To sponsor us in this race and visit our fund-raising page, please click here.

10% of our registration fee was automatically donated to the Nike+ Human Race fund which is shared amongst the three official charities: The UN Refugee agency, The Lance Armstrong Foundation and the WWF, World Wildlife Fund.

The WWF is such a lovely cause and Abenefit2u have chosen to raise extra funds on their behalf.

Some more information about the WWF, World Wildlife Fund…

WWF, the global conservation organization, is one of the worlds largest and most respected independent conservation organisations. WWF has a global network active in more than 100 countries with almost 5 million supporters. As the largest multinational conservation organization in the world, WWF has been protecting the future of nature for more than 45 years.

WWF’s works to address global threats to people and nature, including climate change. Owing to a rapid increase in greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth’s temperature is rising dangerously fast, increasing violent storms, warming seas and melting ice. WWF is pressing for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, and we help threatened species and habitats to adapt to the effects of climate change. In the UK, we are campaigning to ensure a stronger Climate Change Bill, which commits us to emissions reductions of 80% by 2050.

For more information on the WWF, please visit their website: www.wwf.org.uk

Thank you in advance for any donation, no matter what size, and we look forward to definitely having four fans this time cheering us on, or more likely just cheering at the great music…

Dianne and Kathryn at Abenefit2u