Hello,

I’ve been blogging on and off since I was about 15 and previously when I’ve typed I hope you’re all well, I haven’t thought anything of it but now when I type it, I feel like I’m typing an email. So, I do hope you’re well but I’m going to try and think of a less email-y way to type that. But anyway, happy Sunday evening. I hope you have had a wonderful Sunday, whatever that may have looked like. In today’s post I want to share with you an introduction to the fundraising challenge, and general challenge, I have chosen to do this year and my poor father has been dragged along to do with me.

About halfway through last year I decided that I wanted to do a challenge for charity and wanted to put a bit more thought into it than my previous attempt. For those of you who are new here, I ran the Great North Run back a few years ago for Bowel Cancer UK. A great challenge to do and a charity very close to my heart that does incredible work, all of that sounds good right? Let’s cover the putting more thought into aspect of the new challenge. The only thought that went into signing up for the Great North Run was that I felt invincible. A naïve, silly thought and it was all because I had been struggling with a statistics assignment at university for ages, I mean struggling, there were real tears. Then when I completed it at about 2AM I was obviously on top of the world, but we didn’t stop here, we had a little Facebook scroll, saw an advert for the Great North Run and quite simply thought “how hard can it be?”. For those of you who do not know, the Great North Run is a half marathon, and I was not a runner meaning that yes, it actually was quite difficult. I completed it though and fun fact, I’m a raging idiot and want to do it again.

All I had to do then was actually think about doing something before committing to it, I thought about the Yorkshire 3 Peaks and then I thought some more, thought a bit more and signed us up. Once I saw the challenge, I was dead set I was going to do it, it’s something that looks fun but challenging at the same time so ticked all my criteria. Off my head goes back into Lia land where I have another fantastic idea, why don’t I convince my Dad to walk it with me?! If you like to listen to my side of the story, I provided clear arguments as to why this will be a fun and good idea, I let him think about it for a bit and then when he agreed I signed us up. However, if you listen to Martin’s side of the story, he will say this is working as a dictatorship and I gave him little choice in the matter. But whoever’s side you listen to, it doesn’t change the fact that we are doing the Yorkshire Three Peaks in July! YAYYYYY!! *pause here for sounds of crying from Martin*

For this challenge we have decided to fundraise for Mind because we believe that no one should face a mental health problem alone. The chat around mental health has really started to take off and people talk more, but there’s still so much that needs to be done so everyone knows that they don’t need to face their mental health troubles alone. Mind need all of our help so they can be there – on the other end of the phone, in local communities and campaigning hard for better services and support. Our family is no stranger to the struggles of mental health and we want to raise funds for and the awareness of Mind.

Here’s how fundraising helps Mind:

• £20 could run their online peer support community for an hour, helping people connect with others and feel less alone.
• £40 could help their Infoline answer calls, providing someone with vital support and information about help available for them.
• £50 could help them to campaign for better mental health services from the Government, ensuring people get the support they need, as soon as they need it.
• £100 could pay the cost of one of their Infoline or Legal Line advisors for one whole day.

I’ll be sharing our training updates along the way so please make sure you’re following at this link.

Here are some small ways in which you can help us to raise money for Mind:

• Sponsor us! Big or small your donations add up and we are super grateful for them. We have a JustGiving page and an offline sponsorship form.
• Share our page and our updates, let’s get the word out to everyone that we’re doing the bonkers thing of trekking the Yorkshire Three Peaks for Mind.
• Send us some encouragement, we are really focused on training for this challenge but as with every challenge it can be hard. So please send us some positive messages our way.
• Join us for a walk! Don’t worry, I won’t sign you up for the challenge, but we’d love it if you fancied joining us on a training walk. The more, the merrier.

I’ll leave it there for now. Have a lovely week!

Lia x