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Our motivation: On 10th August last year Iain’s partner Catherine went into labour with their first child Ella. The birth started off very smoothly with the midwife commenting that it was a text book first birth. Unfortunately, right at the end Ella's shoulder got stuck, delaying her birth and causing her to suffer oxygen starvation. Ella didn't take her first unassisted breath for 6 minutes. She was diagnosed with grade 2 Hypoxic Ischemic Enchephalophy and taken straight to the neo natal intensive care unit at St George’s Hospital in Tooting. The lack of oxygen meant that she was at a high risk of suffering permanent brain damage. In order to protect the brain she was put in a cooling suit for 3 days. The suit reduces the core body temperature to 33 degrees, which has been shown to have a protective effect on the brain. The doctors were quite honest with both parents about Ella’s chances of making a normal recovery. If Ella’s brain waves didn’t normalise within 6 hours then her chances of a full recovery were minimal. Fortunately they did and at this point Ella’s parents were told she had a 70% chance of making a full recovery. After 3 days in intensive care she was moved to special care and on the 5th day Ella had an MRI scan. With Ella's start to life the doctors said it would be abnormal for the scan to come back with no signs of brain damage. Luckily the scans came back totally normal and Ella is developing in line with her peers. She will continue to be monitored for her first two years.

The treatment Ella received is a relatively recent advance in caring for new born babies who suffer a lack of oxygen at birth. Prior to the cooling technology being rolled out as standard NHS treatment in 2009 Ella would have had around a 70% chance of not making it or suffering from a brain injury that causes some form of lifelong disability such as cerebral palsy, cognitive deficits and/or seizures. Cooling therapy has reduced the chances of this to less than 50%.

James and Iain are raising money for Sparks, the charity that is funding the next stage of research, which combines the cooling with xenon gas. The initial trials show that this combination can help more babies.

The challenge is to walk from the Emirates stadium in London to Carrow road in Norwich (over 120 miles) in 72 hours. We are coinciding this with Norwich's last game of the season at home against Arsenal on 11th May.