I'm Mark Allison, a 50 year old fundraiser from the North East of England. I've been raising funds for St. Benedict's Hospice for the last 28 years. My Mam was a day patient at the hospice for 12 months and received subsequent palliative care during the final 2 weeks of her life as she battled lung cancer.

The debt of gratitude I feel towards the Hospice and the amazing staff continues to be repaid with a series of events that have grown in size, complexity and difficulty over the years.

The main event so far has been a 20,000 mile run around the world which is being done in 9 different stages. Until the pandemic, a total of 5 stages and 10,000 miles had been ran across the UK (John O'Groats to Lands End), USA (California to New York), Australia (Perth to Shellharbour) and Europe (Lisbon to Belgrade to Kiev) with £339,000 being raised for St. Benedict's Hospice and other local charities.

The around the world run will resume in Kiev when it's safe to do so with stages to Kazakhstan and Shanghai then across Japan and finally New Zealand.

In the meantime, the fundraising continues with various endurance events.

This page is for the latest event to be held on Saturday December 18th 2021. Using one of my favourite and challenging machines, the VersaClimber, I will climb the equivalent of sea level up to the summit of Mount Everest. That's a distance of 29,029 ft (8848m). 

In running terms, I anticipate this to be as difficult as, if not more than, a marathon. I hope to finish climbing anywhere between 4 and 5 hours. That's the equivilant of 8 to 10 VersaClimber classes at David Fairlamb Fitness back to back. 

The Virtual Mount Everest challenge is not going to be easy by any means and I do hope you think it's one that is worthy of sponsorship for such n amazing cause. St. Benedict's Hospice are also a charity that have seen events cancelled over the last 20 months due to the pandemic. To help the hospice to continue to care for terminally ill people in our region means that now, more than ever, they need our support.

Please donate whatever you are able to as every penny counts. It really does. Did you know that of the £106,000 raised during the run across the USA, an incredible £50,000 was made up of donations of £10 or less. So putting all of our collective efforts together means that we can make a huge difference to such an important charity. 

Watch out on this page soon for details on how you can follow the event live. As ever, the journey can be followed by searching "Run Geordie Run" on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. There is also www.rungeordierun.com for more in depth analysis.

That's all for now. I'm off to figure out how on earth I'm going to climb to such a height un less than 2 weeks time!

Thanks for reading and a huge thank you in anticipation of your kind support.

Mark Allison