Firstly, welcome to my JustGiving Page! Thank you for clicking and getting this far, and for all of your continued support in the build up to my challenge.

UPDATE: After all of the restrictions of last year, I will now be participating in the London Marathon 2021 on 3rd October and 'The St Albans Cake' costume has been upgraded 😀.  I have also had the costume approved and will be attempting to set a Guinness World Record for the "fastest marathon dressed as a sweet food"!

 I am kick-starting my marathon training and testing the durability of the upgraded costume with the St Albans Half-Marathon on 13th June!

Charities need our help more than ever and Save the Children are working to help deal with the impact of the pandemic both getting healthcare to individuals and helping to bridge the education gap for Children living in poverty which has been exacerbated by the pandemic.

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This year was the 40th anniversary of the London Marathon and I was absolutely delighted to run for Save the Children in the event which was planned for 26th April 2020 but then postponed to 4th October 2020.

Since we were in lockdown on 26th April, I decided to run 26.2 miles around my garden and even made it onto the front page of the guardian!  I also ran the virtual London Marathon event by completing the 26.2 mile race around St Albans in October.  

My 2020 place has been rolled over to the Octover 2021 event  and therefore the training continues.

In the UK and around the world, Save the Children helps to make sure children stay safe, healthy and keep learning so they can become who they want to be.  They have supported children during the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK and across the world.

To really encourage donations, as the company I work for, GlaxoSmithKline, will match every penny raised I have decided to run in a cake costume.  In addition, I pledged to dye my hair pink if we exceeded the £1900 target by an additional £600, and then rainbow colours if £3500 was raised - these targets were smashed and therefore my hair is now pink/rainbow. 

Many of you will know that I like to run and have even completed the London Marathon before.  However, that was over 12 years ago, I have had 2 children since and have not run a distance greater than 10 miles since 2007 so I will be needing all the support I can get to help me through the winter months of training and increasing my mileage to the 26.2 miles I will have to cover on the day itself.

I have started my training and have been wearing my costume for my runs around the streets of St Albans!

Anything donated towards my goal is truly appreciated.   

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. So it's the most efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

Thank you for your support

Anna

Background on the GSK-Save the Children Partnership

In 2013, GSK and Save the Children formed a ground-breaking partnership combining Save the Children's global reach and experience, with GSK's innovation, resources and expertise. The purpose of the shared partnership is to help save the lives of one million children by tackling preventable under-five mortality.

Please check out the link below for more info about what the partnership aims to do and has already delivered on:

https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/about-us/who-we-work-with/corporate-partners/gsk