Running Through the Pain: Our 10k for RSPCA

By Maria Ward, Account Manager/ Knowledgebase Engineer

On Sunday, 18th September 2016 a 10 member team from Creative Virtual will be running the London Duathlon RunTen in support of RSPCA. I’ll be joining David, Laura, Kristina, Alessandro and Chris (pictured above modelling our official running kit!) and Rachel, Jeff, Andre and Tracey in the 10k taking place in beautiful Richmond Park, the largest of London’s eight Royal Parks. We’ve all been training over the past few months, taking part in our Wednesday Running Club when we can, and fitting our own runs into busy schedules while also working on our fundraising efforts.

My running story over the last year has been somewhat up and down. This time last year I was training for a 6 hour run – The Tolkien run – when disaster struck on a 22 mile training run. A flare up of Morton’s Neuroma meant I could only get about using crutches. I did the 6 hour race, two weeks later, on crutches, and managed to do 23.1 miles. My hands hurt a LOT!  I raised money for Macmillan, a charity chosen by my friend Steven who was undergoing chemotherapy at the time.

Since then I have had periods of limited running (followed by frustrating periods of no running). I’ve run the Brighton Marathon in April on very little training and 10 days later had surgery on my foot to try to rid me of the pesky neuroma that has been blighting my running. That put me out of action for another 6 weeks.

Fast forward to the middle of June and I started to take my first tentative steps back running. They were not easy and not pretty – short, slow and frustratingly hard.

That brings me to the fundraising. Fundraising is hard!! My friends and family often dig deep to support my running endeavours. I’m sure that sometimes they get fed up though! To help my fundraising efforts, I have decided to put some of my artwork up for auction, splitting all money between two charities – RSPCA and Cancer Research. So far I have bids on four of my pieces.

And finally to the big day, this coming Sunday. I have built up my distance. My speed is not yet back to what it was (but then I’m no spring chicken now!) but I feel ready and am looking forward to a run with my fabulous work colleagues. Skipper, my own furry friend, is a little disappointed he will be staying at home – he’d love to run with us too!

If you haven’t done so already, please consider helping us reach our fundraising goal by sponsoring our 10k team. You can donate through our team JustGiving page or, if you’re in the UK, text CVCV50 and an amount of £1, £2, £3, £4, £5 or £10 to 70070.

Thanks to everyone who has already donated – we really appreciate your support! We’re proud of the work Creative Virtual has done with RSPCA over the years to help them provide accurate, consistent and readily accessible information to the public (check out RSPCA’s Customer Success Story to learn more), and are excited to have this opportunity to raise money for such a great charity. Go Team Animal!