Total Raised by Running Zermatt, Thank You!

Hi folks!

Greetings from sunny Nottinghamshire! After a rather damp CarFest we’re settling back into life at home. Zagan’s up in his storage location having a rest, with his water system drained down and curtains pulled. He’s done us proud, and we’re really pleased the wheel bearing problem we had the past couple of tours **seems** (touches wood, throws salt over shoulder, avoids walking under a ladder, adopts black cat) to have been fixed. Ju’s going to put together a summary of this latest jaunt and pop it up here in the next few days: where we ended up, what we did, what it cost and the like (there are summaries of previous tours here).

We’re enjoying the one thing we really miss when we’re away in our motorhome: being with our friends and family. I can’t lie and say we’re not enjoying the convenience of being in a bricks and mortar house too! Just flicking the electric kettle on, having a long hot shower, flushing the loo, plugging chargers into the mains and all that jazz, are things we appreciate all the more after a while out in our luxury wagon on wheels. We’re probably staying home for a few months now, although we will get out and about in Zagan and Ju’s signed us up for some more house-sitting (which really means pet sitting, as houses mostly look after themselves), so we’ll see some of the UK that way too, which we’re looking forward to.

A few folks have asked how much we all raised for the British Lung Foundation during our charity mountain marathon run in Zermatt. We’ve collected some offline donations at home (which have gone direct to the local Breathe Easy team), and are really happy to announce (including gift aid), the total came to:

£1782.27

That’s no small amount of money, and we appreciate the donations and also the lovely comments from you all. The volunteers at Breathe Easy are delighted, and have even asked us to go and do a talk about the run. We’ve agreed, but I’m not quite sure what we’ll say other than “erm,we ran up a big hill and a load of lovely people gave us lots of their hard-earned cash”. It’s perhaps an odd thing to be doing, going talking to folks with lung problems, many of them serious, about running in thin air up in the mountains? I’m sure it will have the effect of making us both all the more grateful for the good health we have.

After a relatively easy month of running, we’re starting to crank it back up again a bit. We were at the Shipley Parkrun this morning, a slightly evil, two-hill course, and I even led it for a few meters before finishing 3rd – how surprised was I! Must be all this nice thick air after the oxygen-less stuff up in the Alps? Ju’s enjoying running with some company again. She’s a far more social runner (person) than me, I can churn out the miles wandering about inside my own head, but she likes having people to talk to. As we run at such difference paces, that generally means she ends up running alone when we’re touring, which makes it hard for her and I’m please she has plenty of company again (go KADS!).

I’ve a 27 mile run tomorrow (the Dovedale Dipper), then Ju and I are both taking part in a 24 hour running event in September called the Equinox 24. Ju’s in a team and will do at least a half marathon. I’m in a pair, which means two of us take it in turns to run a 10km loop, and will just try and run as far as I can with a running colleague from our club here in Kimberley. This should be interesting, as lack of sleep and running in the dark will be a new thing for the both of us, but at least we’ll have the comfort of Zagan to recover in between laps. Ju’s also booked onto the Robin Hood Half Marathon, which is a really wonderful, well-supported run through our local city of Nottingham.

Some fellow runners have asked me what it was like to finish at Gornergrat and my honest answer is simply this: it was out of this world, truly wonderful. As I tell them, my arm hairs stand on end. It was such a privilege for us to have your support, and to be able to compete in such stunning surroundings. The race itself was flawlessly organised and supported as it was last year, but that’s our last crack at it I think. Time for a new challenge to be chased down, watch this space. So, thanks again folks, we won’t be harassing anyone for money again for another year or so (phew – relief all round :-)).

Cheers, Jay