Anybody who has followed anything we have done in the last year will be aware that I have become involved with The Karen Green Foundation, a local charity in Nottingham raising funds for people affected by and suffering from cancer, and in particular cancers of the blood such as Leukaemia.
I just wanted to tell the story again because, for me, the telling of the story never lessens the impact and there will be more things coming out to do with The Karen Green Foundation in due course and I want everybody to give us as much help as possible.
People become involved in altruistic and charity deeds for various reasons as far as I can see and it is interesting to get a snapshot of who actually does give money to charity when I stood at my daughters recent dance show in the concert hall raising money for the children’s cancer ward at the local hospital with a bucket and watched exactly what the profile of the people were who put money in. No one, I guess, should really judge this because people put money in for different reasons but the people I had seen at my daughters dance class who always seemed to be the ‘stuck up’ ones with the big cars who thought they were better than everybody else were not the ones who put the money in the buckets.
Over the past 5 or 6 years I have become involved in triathlon and bike riding and there is a local bike shop called Langdale’s in Nottingham, which is a Mecca for cyclists. It is run by Mick Green and he has been there forever.
He was a competitive cyclist of quite a high level in his youth and knows everything there is to know about cycling and bikes.
In 2011 I had only met Mick a few times but I had bought a bike from him and was really enjoying my trips to Langdale’s. I was aware that his wife had been unwell. On the 4th July Karen died, following a four and a half year battle with Leukemia including a traumatic bone marrow transplant.
My wife is a children’s cancer nurse and people die of cancer all the time but sometimes deaths affect individuals for various reasons and I was affected by this as all I could see was a guy around my age left to raise 2 children and try to run his business at the same time. I had no idea how he would manage to do it. I then had a call from the triathlon coach to say that Mick had decided to participate in the Outlaw Triathlon, which is an iron distance triathlon (2.4 mile open water swim, 112 mile bike, 26 mile marathon) to try and kick start a foundation in his wife’s honour and would I become involved in the race, either as an individual or in a team. Things snowballed from that point and I was asked later to become one of three trustees in the charity which I gladly accepted and watched in wonder as Mick trained and prepared (in horrendously difficult circumstances) to participate in his first iron man triathlon.
In the end we all got caught up in what was a huge event. The guys at the practice were absolutely fabulous raising money by riding a stationary bike for 112 miles in the weeks running up to the Outlaw with patients giving huge generosity. The guys at the practice also manned a feed station on the run. People at my birthday party donated huge amounts of money. Suppliers donated money. Family and friends donate money. A team came from Scotland to participate in the event for me and in total we raised £8,500.
Recently one of my friends in Scotland has run a charity dinner and part of the proceeds of this go to The Karen Green Foundation. We have even had celebrity involvement from Chris Boardman the cyclist and Carl Froch the boxer.
In the end though my involvement in The Karen Green Foundation was down to the way I felt about Mick’s loss and how it would feel if I was in his position and that is what made me get involved. The picture on this blog says it all. As he crossed the line at the Outlaw Triathlon, 3 days before the first anniversary of his wife’s death, with his 2 daughters having accomplished a monumental thing and bringing something good out of something terrible.
Please watch out on the social media stuff for what we are going to do over the next little while. There are some challenges to come for us and some amazing events to try and raise money and help people in similar situations to Mick and to do something good.
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