The great question is "How on Earth did Helen get from watching everyone else do #nomakeupselfie on Facebook to signing up for the Pier-to-Pier swim?"  Read on and you shall find out.

Listen children, with your eyes and with your noses...  Once upon a time, a girl called Helen did something very silly and fell in love with a very strange man called Gavin.  They loved each other so much that they were going to get married.  Unfortunately, because life is never as simple as stories would have you believe, Gavin was ill with kidney disease and heart failure and he passed away before they could get married.  After this, Helen frequently vowed to herself that she would, one day, raise money for some of the charities involved in supporting people like Gavin.

Three years passed and Helen never really got around to doing anything about this aim of hers to do some fundraising but kept on thinking that she ought to do so.

One day, she logged onto Facebook to find her entire newsfeed taken up with women and girls posting their #nomakeupselfies to raise awareness for cancer research and a rant from a friend saying that if people really wanted to raise awareness, they'd do something bigger like go without makeup for an entire week and ask for sponsorship to go to the other charity.  After promising to sponsor her friend if she went ahead with this huge personal challenge, Helen started thinking about a challenge that she could take instead and, after a bit of internet searching, found the Pier-to-Pier swim.  The rest, as they say is history.

So, yes, this is phase one of Project "Raising Funds for the Charities most linked to Gavin's illness".  I haven't really swum on a regular basis since I was at university; I've never really got up to any great distances and I do much prefer a nice, neat pool to open water.  However, there's 16 weeks (as of 20th March 2014) until the pier-to-pier swim so there's plenty of time for training!

 

The usual blurb...

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