humbled...

Raising money for charity is a truly humbling experience.

When we knew we were going to be running the marathon, I thought about what kind of a target we should set.  I've raised money running half marathons before, and I like to think I've been pretty good at it.  If you included gift aid, when we ran the Robin Hood half in 2011 we raised a little over £3,000.  When I entered the same race the following year, even though I only had a few weeks to go before the start, I still managed to raise more than £1,250.

Not bad going, I thought.  We can top that, can't we?  Running a full marathon is a much bigger deal, after all.  Shall we start with a target of £3,000 and see how we go?

Well, with a little over a week-and-a-half to go before we line up in London, we've raised over £3,600 (including gift aid) with something like £900 to add from offline fund-matching from work, the money we raised at the cake sale earlier this week and things like that.  There's still time to chase out a few more last-minute donations too.

I reckon that, by the time we've finished, we will have raised something approaching £5,000.  That's a huge amount of money that will make a huge difference to the MS Trust and will help them to reach even more people affected by multiple sclerosis, providing information and support.

I'm delighted.... but it really is humbling.  That money has come from all sorts of people, who have put their hands into their pockets and put an enormous vote of trust in us.  Many of these people will not have heard of the MS Trust before; some may not know that much about multiple sclerosis; it's likely that lots of them might not even know why we're running for the charity.  Hell, some of them are barely more than acquaintances.... but they still decided to make a donation to our charity.  Some went further than that: they baked cakes for us; they chased donations out of people who don't even really know who we are; they took the time to talk to us and to find out about the charity and to see how we were doing with the training.

It's humbling and it's inspiring.

I find it emotional watching the London Marathon on the telly.  With the tens of thousands of other runners and the hundreds of thousands of spectators cheering us on, never mind the legs, you can pretty much guarantee that I'm going to be an emotional wreck by the time we cross the finish line.

You can still sponsor us here!