Hard to believe that just 4 Sundays ago I was running round Portsmouth in the Great South Run but today, having tested positive for COVID (and been instructed not to leave house/garden), on runstreak day 439 I am officially confined to barracks…. welcome to the Hamster Wheel challenge. 

For each of the last 63 weeks of runstreak, I have done at least 26.2 miles, and would dearly like to keep this going BUT to do this during my confinement will require a minimum of 100 laps of the house/garden each day! 

To try and bring something worthwhile out of this exercise in sheer bloody-mindedness (!), I thought I’d try and raise a bit of money to help the Care International “Fast and fair” COVID-19 vaccination programme which is working to deliver vaccines to those in poorer countries (https://www.careinternational.org.uk/fast-and-fair-covid-vaccines)

According to UNICEF sources, it costs around £1.25 for a single shot of COVID vaccine and if I can get sponsorships to cover 100 shots or more (ie a target of £125), I will also put in for 100 to make our combined contribution a minimum of 200 vaccines (£250), something that has to be worth getting dizzy for !!  

We only have just over a week to do this thing so please do spread the message as far and as wide as you can … and thank you so much for any / all encouragement that you can give me as I do my Hamster Wheel Challenge (aka “the vicarage marathon”). This will make a huge difference to the lives of people who do not live in places where self-isolation (let alone garden marathons) is possible.