Endurance, hysteria, fatigue and flapjacks.
What a weekend!
My friend and I joined the time-honoured tradition that is The Moonwalk London, walking 26.2 miles through the night with 14,998 other women (and men - yes they get it too!) to raise much-needed funds for breast cancer research. Made all the more poignant by the fact that the morning of the event we heard that a dear friend has recently been diagnosed with cancer in her bones, so Lizzy we walked for you and kept you in our thoughts, hearts and footsteps!
Because we were the last group to be released from the traps, we got caught up in the excitement in the tent, participating in all 6 (!) warm-up sessions, spurred on by the rousing speech from Sadiq Khan and propelled along by the pink and sparkly buzz in the tent!
We set off at midnight with a determination to keep up a steady pace throughout, finish by 730am and be home with a cup of tea and bacon butty (in Clapham) by 8am!! What chumps!
Although the determination lasted, the pace did not! By mile 7 we were questioning why we were finding it so much harder than our many 7 mile training walks … maybe because it was 2am! We still had a very long way to go!
There were plenty of highlights to pounding the streets of London by night … the sights, the sounds, the very pink London Eye, a shared strength of spirit, high fiving clubbers as they emerged from underground clubs, waving at tooting cabbies, munching on homemade flapjacks (thanks Jo!), cheering as the sun came up at around 430am and then taking a bit of a dip when we realised at mile 17 that we still had 2 hours to go! Mile 17 - 22 were hard, slow and my hips were shouting the whole way, but we kept together, kept smiling, laughed at each other’s jokes (although they didn’t seem quite so funny around mile 21) and we did it! We cheered as we passed both Institute’s for Cancer Research, marvelling at their brilliance and dedication to overcoming this dreadful disease that affects so many lives.
I’m proud this morning to have taken part in the fundraising machine that is The Moonwalk London Charity Walk. A massive THANK YOU to the totally amazing volunteers who cheerily said good morning to 15,000 walkers (for what must have been over 10 hours!) navigating us all safely across busy junctions, encouraging, clapping, smiling, scooping up those who needed rescuing - you were all fab!
Thanks to friends and family who’ve supported and kindly donated, it means a lot. So far the two of us have raised £1,041.20 which is fantastic.
There’s still time to do more though, if you’d like to donate, we’d really appreciate it and so would those researchers who with every pound get one step closer to finding the cure to this terrible disease! We must keep supporting them, if we have any hope of making a difference.
If you're able to donate please visit https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/victoria-ward33
Thank you x