thirtydegree

Why have you decided to join the Heart Runners team? You may enter up to 1000 characters *

I’ve been looking hard to support a charity whose cause doesn’t discriminate against men or women. I grew up without both my grandfathers, as they both died of heart related disease before I was born. Also knowing young, fit people suffering heart trouble, I feel that this is the right charity for me to support, as heart disease doesn’t discriminate its victims.

I’m a firm believer that a healthy heart leads to a healthy mind. I took up running as my main focus for exercise last year and have run over 800km in 7 months. I’ve discovered a true passion in running and using Nike+ this has been kept fresh through challenges and tracking my progress over time. I also started to notice how much better I feel when I run and it’s the perfect opportunity to clear my head of clutter at the end of the day and week.

How would you aim to achieve your pledged fundraising target (please provide full details)? *

I am going to run a “Tweet my beat” campaign. The tweet with the closest match to my total heartbeats for the duration of the marathon will stand to win an iPod. The tweeter will need to have donated to be considered in the draw. Joint winners will receive iTunes vouchers as an equivalent alternative. This shall be for my personal expense.

My campaign will be focussed towards online social networking – Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and to a lesser extent LinkedIn (for professional purposes), as friends who have run for charity say that this is where they achieve the majority of their fundraising.

Offline, I will be creating awareness to my campaign through my gym noticeboard (Virgin Active) to extend the reach of fundraising. I shall also extend this to friends and family, with Christmas cards focussed on giving to your charity.

At work I shall try a few different fundraising avenues, in the form of an emailer soliciting donations for my run. Closer to the time of the marathon I will also ask for an awareness day in the form of a casual Friday £2. This should be able to bring in £200 and if extremely lucky, a match may be made by the company, however I am not banking on this part. A doughnut donation is another excellent fundraising opportunity at the office.

I firmly believe that through these efforts and putting in 5 hours a week towards fundraising efforts, I will be able to meet my target of £1,500. As this is my first fundraising effort, I don’t want to fall short of my target and make you miss your fundraising target. Obviously the aim is to exceed this target.