At 10am on Thursday morning, a team of 14 MEC employees and friends will set off from the beach inWhitehaven in Cumbria in an attempt to cycle all the way across the country to Tynemouth on the North Sea - an epic 140-mile ride across the country over three days.
All being well, we’ll arrive in time for a quick night’s sleep before the hard-core amongst us run the Great North Run the following day, taking us to a total of 153 miles of running and cycling over four days.
Why are we doing this? We’re hoping to encourage some donations for Elise for Life, an appeal set up to raise funds for the Christie Hospital in Manchester. Elise for Life is MEC Manchester’s chosen charity for 2011, and was created with the aim of raising £1m for the Christie in memory of Elise Roberts, the sister of MEC’s Client Services Director Nola Calladine.
Elise was a patient at the Christie and battled courageously for 9 months with malignant melanoma. Her legacy is this appeal, set up by her, in her name, for the treatment, care and support of others. All money raised by the appeal will be split equally between melanoma research and The Christie’s new clinical trials unit.
We’re covering the costs of the ride/run ourselves, and are looking for any donations - however large or small – to benefit the appeal and spur us on when we realise halfway through that we’re not quite the honed athletes we thought we were!
More information on the appeal can be found at www.eliseforlife.org, and we’ll provide a full report on the highs, lows, flat tires and blistered soles accumulated en route after the event via the MEC Manchester blog(www.mecmanchester.co.uk).
Any donations can be made at www.justgiving.com/c2cgnr
Thanks for your support
