Liz's Cake Sale

Some of you may have seen the email that Liz (Cullen) sent round recently with the excellent idea of holding a cake sale to raise more money for Meningitis Research that could go towards my target.

Well, as you can see from the photo here, Liz put in a monumental days baking and thanks to all her hard work, and to her colleagues at Two Mile Ash school in Milton Keynes, managed to raise over £50 :-)

So a massive thank you to Liz for taking the time to do this (and I'm sure it wasn't easy, having to keep Chris and James from eating the ingredients and the final product!) and to everyone who bought from her on the day. My only regret is that I didn't get to sample any of them myself, but then I guess with my much needed on-going fitness regime that's probably a good thing!

A big THANK YOU!!

Well, I was rather hopeful that following the email I sent the other day I'd get a bit more sponsorship to take me closer to my target, but the response has been fantastic, so I'd just like to say a massive thank you to everyone who has sponsored me so far.

As I write this, the total amount stands at £2,435 - which is well over the 80% I required by the 25th January.

I really appreciate the support I've had from everyone, and from some of the messages I've read it seems that main motivation WASN'T related to my offer to take photos of me in my new lycra shorts (surprisingly!). However, seeing as I made the offer, I thought I should follow through on my promise, so below are a couple of photos for you to laugh at!

If you'd like to spare your eyes from such images, then please look away now! :-)








As you can see, I did feel a little uncomfortable at first.......
















.....but then my photographer (cheers Deano!) helped me relax and experiment with a catalogue style pose too :-)










As these photos prove, my dignity is slowly diminishing, and as I still have over £500 to raise to reach my target, who knows what other demeaning stunts I shall have to undertake to reach it (feel free to email any ideas, or add them as comments at the end of this post!)

BBQ

Over the bank holiday weekend my mum kindly offered to host a BBQ for myself and my friends to help the fundraising effort, as I'm sure most of you know. Well, I'm very happy to say that it was a great success and everyone seemed to enjoy it and even come away without a trace of food poisoning! (mainly thanks to Johns expert BBQ skills, despite him being jet lagged at the time - thanks John!)

A big thank you to everyone who came along (including Stefi who came all the way from Germany!) and who sponsored me - the total is slowly creeping up and is almost up to £2000 now which is fantastic! Special thanks to my mum for offering up their house to us all and buying all the food (and also to my dad for putting up with it all!) - they told me they enjoyed catching up with everyone too. Unfortunately my mum seemed to escape the camera, with the exception of when she was hiding from the water spray.... I'll have to see if I can find an amusing photo of her to post as punishment!

Thanks again.....Keep checking back for details of the next fun filled event, but in the mean time check out some of the photos from the day below.......

I asked specially for this photo so I could pretend that I'd done all the cooking.... but figured no-one would believe me anyway!



So here is a photo of the real chef, along with hair!! (an unusual sight for those who know Geordie John!!)

And here is Alex looking rather too comfortable with James Cullen..... James does look like he is straining a bit actually, so I hope you washed your hands after!

Helen seemed to spend a lot of time camping out by the BBQ......



... as were Ben and Helen by the looks of it!



Alex and Helen (still with food in her hand!) and grinning at Alex's new found desire for babies (I presume!)



Garner and Laura - was great to see both of you, and hope to see you at a Stoke City match some time soon!



My niece and my dad - the former was terrorising one and all with a water spray (but we soon got revenge!) and the latter was on hand as ever with his amusing comments which we all enjoyed! (I still can't stop thinking about candy thongs though - it's just so so wrong!!)



Jason - again someone I've not seen in far too long! It was great to see you, and I'm really sorry I didn't re-take this photo when you had your eyes open!



Madeleine and Liz, in the kitchen as all good wives and girlfriends should be! (I'm going to get in trouble for saying that, I just know it!!)



And Dylan, Maddies boyfriend, who needed to resort to two bottles of wine and a can of lager all at once to cope with it all :-)



And finally my mum - but unfortunately she hid from the camera as she was a bit wet following a revenge water attack!! You thought she'd have learnt after 27 years!!

Training begins!

Well, as some of you know, I finally got round to joining a gym, so now my training can begin in earnest!

It helps enormously that the gym in question is located one floor away from my desk at work, and I can squeeze in an hours workout during my lunch break. I've been going 3 times a week now for the past 3 weeks - but still have a big round hairy belly annoyingly! I guess I should be more patient and also remember that going to the gym is not simply an excuse to eat more McDonalds and big bacon baguettes at work in the morning! The good news though is that I am actually starting to notice a difference and have slowly starting increasing the level of exercise.

One other thing I have noticed is what a difference my iPod selection for the workout makes. For example, listening to music often helps energise me - sometimes a little too much however, as I once found out when I almost fell off the treadmill as I accidentally began dancing along to Sk8er Boi (yes, I have no shame!!). I also listen to a range of podcasts though and some seem to really help (e.g. PMQs podcast from the Guardian and the Today programme can often wind me up!), whilst some just send me to sleep (such as the Chequered Flag - Radio 5's GP reviews).

But all in all it’s going pretty well, despite still feeling somewhat out of place around so many fit people - as can be seen by my awkward smile in the photo! (although I also felt awkward asking a random person to take a photo of me working out - think they thought I was a bit of a weirdo!)

Outside of the gym, I've been out for a few small bike rides - the longest being a 15 mile effort capped off with a nice big hearty meal at a pub (another reason for the lingering presence of my belly I guess!), and I feel I'm slowly building up my stamina. I even managed a fairly decent size hill the other day! :-)

I'll try to update the blog a bit more regularly (along with photos hopefully), and will post soon with details of the BBQ my mum is kindly hosting to support me at the end of August.

Many, many thanks to all those that have sponsored me so far - you've been incredibly generous and I really appreciate it! Thank you :-)

Chris.

Why Meningitis Research?

So why have I chosen to raise money for the Meningitis Research Foundation?

In my second year of University, one of my good friends, Susie, contracted meningitis and subsequently died from the disease. She was 19 years old and fit and healthy.

What was particularly shocking was the speed at which it all happened - we had all been out to cinema on the Friday night and everything was as normal.... the next day Susie started showing symptoms and was admitted to hospital. By Monday, only 2 days later, she had died from the disease.

The Meningitis Research Foundation not only supports research into the causes and treatment of the disease, but also works to raise awareness and educate on the symptoms of the disease and the impact it can have.

Likewise, I am hoping that by taking part in this challenge I will not only raise money for the charity, but also increase awareness of the disease myself. It really can affect anyone, and by becoming familiar with the symptoms you may be able to recognise them in yourself or someone else and ensure treatment is received as quickly as possible, and hopefully prevent the same consequences as befell Susie.

If you would like any more info on meningitis - including identifying the symptoms of the disease - and the work of the Meningitis Research Foundation, please click on the link below or the one at the top right of this page.

Meningitis Research Foundation

To sponsor me online, please go to the following page (always available at the top right of this page) :

Click here to sponsor me online! Thanks :-)

Introduction

Hello! Thanks for stopping by.....

As this is my first post, I'll give a brief introduction and outline the purpose of this blog.

As you can see from reading the description at the top of this page, I have recently signed up to take part in a sponsored bike ride from the Andes to the Amazon next April (2007). The credit for coming up with this idea has to go to my little sister, Jess, who is also taking part in this challenge at the same time (more on that in one of my next posts!).

The charity I have decided to raise money for is the Meningitis Research Foundation (see link) - again, I will make a separate post as to my reasons for this, but suffice to say for now that I've been unfortunate enough to witness the devastating impact of this disease whilst at university. My hope is that I will be able to not only raise money for further research into combating the disease, but also raise the general level of awareness of the disease, its symptoms and effects, and also the charity itself. As for the blog itself, I have a number of aims.....

• - to give a brief background as to how I got involved with this challenge
• - to explain my reasons for choosing to raise money for the Meningitis Research Foundation
• - to share news and results of fundraising events and chart my progress in reaching my target of £3,000
• - to keep you updated on how my training is progressing (I have a long way to go!)
• - to give all you good people out there a chance to leave comments and ideas - any thoughts on how I can raise money would be much appreciated!

Thanks for visiting, and make sure you bookmark this page and come back regularly for news and updates on my progress!

Chris.