£1000 Raised Already

Wow!  You've already helped me to raise over £1000 with your donations and the gift aid for the charities that I am supporting with my Kilimanjaro challenge.  That's fantastic news and will make a difference to these charities, who desperately need the money to help them reach out to help more cancer patients bravely dealing with this awful illness.  Your help means a great deal to these people.

A particular thank you to everyone who has donated in response to my article "Becoming a Cancer Widower", which has been shared on Huffington Post, Macmillan and Yes To Life.  I've received many lovely comments from people saying that they found it helpful and inspiring, even though it also stirred up sadness at the same time.  I'm glad that so many people have connected with it and found it helpful.

 If you would like to read my article, you can find it on any of the following websites:

• Huffington Post - Becoming a Cancer Widower
  
• Yes To Life - Becoming a Cancer Widower
  
• Macmillan - Becoming a Cancer Widower

On the training side of things it's not such good news unfortunately as I've got a bit of a knee injury from playing badminton last week!  I'm going to rest it for a bit and hopefully it will settle down on its own but if not I may need to get advice from a Physio.  Luckily it's not serious and I probably just need to be a little bit more careful for a while.

Welcome to My Blog!

I thought it would be a good idea to set up a blog to keep a record of my Kilimanjaro adventures and to share some of the things I've been doing.

I'm doing this challenge in memory of my wife Beata, who was such a beautiful and inspirational person.  I hope that I can do her proud by taking on a big challenge like this and by raising money for two charities that were important to her.

A friend of mine (Colin Holloway), who is never one to turn down the chance of a big challenge, has offered to do the climb with me, so in September we will both be joining a group of around 20 trekkers to make our ascent to the summit of the world's highest free-standing mountain - nearly 6km above sea level, where the air has less than half the amount of oxygen we’re used to and where temperatures can be as low as -25°C.  We’ll be hiking through four climatic zones to get there, starting off in temperatures about 30°C.  Each day of the ascent we’ll be drinking around 5 litres of water a day to keep hydrated and burning around 5000 Calories a day of food and fat!

On Tuesday, Colin an I went to a briefing about the trek in London and signed on the dotted line, so we are now fully committed!  We've got two big tasks over the next 9 months - training and fundraising.  We're paying for all our own costs, so all the money we raise will go to the charities.  If you'd like to sponsor me, please click on the link in the side panel.

That's it for now.  This is where the story will unfold, so check back every now and again if you want to keep tabs on our progress or sign up to follow my blog by submitting your email address in the Follow My Blog section on the right.