As many of you heard, the 2020 London Marathon was a recent casualty of the Covid-19. It will move forward for the elites only, and since I’m not an elite, my hope to run London as the AIMS charity runner was dashed, again. Don and I have now fully planned 3 trips to London and couldn’t wait to meet the AIMS trustees in real life! Unfortunately though, life doesn’t always cooperate. Poor Don has spent hours on the phone scheduling, rescheduling and ultimately cancelling all the travel arrangements. He truly is the MVP in this situation.
The 2020 London Marathon is now a virtual event for the general runners. The bright side was all runners who had a bib were given the option to run the race virtually. The London Marathon also guaranteed AIMS a bib in the 2021, 2022 or 2023 marathon, so there is still hope for a future runcation.
While virtual events can be tough with no crowd support, aid stations, official time keeping, etc., it didn’t give me much pause to commit to run this event virtually. Like all tough things in life, it’s all in your attitude, which, truth be told, it took me a few hours to shut down my stupid pity party.
What brought me out the other side smiling, and quite frankly laughing?
National Lampoon’s European Vacation.
You all know the iconic scene: Chevy Chase driving round and round the roundabout exclaiming, “Hey look kids, Big Ben, Parliament!” Over and over. In the corner of our office are props we purchased for the fundraising BBQ that was cancelled due to COVID back in March. We have Big Ben, a red telephone booth, London Bridge and soon, many British flags. Add to that, a .45 mile loop in front of our house that could mimic a roundabout. Within minutes, an iconic virtual London Marathon route was born! So, I may not be in London on October 4, 2020 but we will set the stage for an epic London run. Ok, minus the cooler weather, the amazing accent, English tea and pints but I think we are going to call it close enough!
So if you are doing the math, yes this is 58.2 times around my .45 mile loop to equal 26.2 miles. (Pretty sure I should change directions every so often.) Completely insane, right? Yes, absolutely.
Why am I telling you all this? I could just silently run the virtual event, wait for the virtual shirt and medal in the mail and move on with life but you know who can’t move on with life? Those with MS. You see, while I was having a pity party because I couldn’t RUN the 2020 London Marathon, there are many wishing they could run even one-tenth of a mile.
COVID has hurt many charities with events being cancelled and AIMS is no different. Donations are still needed to help provide grants so patients can get HSCT, just like I received at Northwestern in 2012.
Thank you to all who have already supported my fundraising. Some of you have donated multiple times but I have one more HUGE ask for this 2020 London Marathon event. Let’s raise an additional $1,300.00. Which is a fully funded grant for one patient needing HSCT. This is an estimate and does vary but $1,300 is the maximum grant per recipient. Surely, we can all rally together and raise enough funds to help one deserving person receive an AIMS grant and possibly become as insane as me? Ok, well, maybe not that crazy!
Feel free to throw down $1.00 per lap run clockwise, $2.00 per lap run counterclockwise, $1.00 every time I tell Don that I am NEVER running this loop again, ever. Or how many times my neighbors will ask me if everything is okay…… Well you get the gist of it… Bottom line is, let’s do this!
My never ending fundraising loop is still live! https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/ShariMcGlynn