Hello,

My name's Sophie Vitai, I'm 26 years old and I'm from Windsor! (The crowd roars!!) ;)

Yesterday (Sunday 5th February 2018), I started my boxing training at Monkey Muay Thai - PLEASE NOTE THAT BEFORE THIS I HAD NEVER BOXED IN MY LIFE! - just less than seven weeks before I have to stand in a ring, for an officially organised event, and hold myself up against an unknown fellow competitor... for six solid minutes (apparently the dress code is black tie - not sure how that's going to work?! ;) ).

I am currently in a lot of muscle pain and can hardly walk, and yet I am going to continue along this painful, sure road to self-annihilation (think it's known as "KO" in the painfully addictive Tekken game), in order to try and raise some money for a wonderful charity (which JustGiving won't let me note here if I'm not linking to the charity's official page - see explanation in the next paragraph).

I aim to raise at LEAST the value equivalent to 15 tickets to the event (selling at £22.04 each) which is the minimum donation to take part in the event but slightly awkwardly needs to be raised through ticket sales by the competitor... if that makes sense? So please give generously as I'd love to push past that target if I can and raise even more money for the charity who must not be named but starts with "cancer" and ends with "research". On a separate note - if you fancy watching live and coming along, please contact me directly as well, as it'd be lovely to have some fans; even if you're only there to watch my face break. (I'll have at least 14 tickets spare ;) ).

Of course, my aim is to beat the other woman with my mastery Southpaw skills; however, I am by far (yes, shock horror) the smallest human being in training at the moment and may possibly be wiped-out. Therefore please donate to this page to either 1). Save my near-perfect face; or 2). See an embarrassing display of missed punches (on my part), broken lips (also on my part) and a glory salute (... by the other one). If you donate, I promise there will be video evidence sent to you afterwards which I'll let you blackmail me with for years to come. The more you donate, I may even allow you to choose my clothing, hairstyle, epic make-up on the day - ooo! - too far?!

For those of you who don't know me (of course, your loss) - I am well-acquainted with said charity. In fact, my first job was at the local charity shop in Sunningdale, UK - fun fact! The money they raise goes to partly funding research towards cancer treatments (amongst other things) to hopefully help us beat cancer sooner; which is so important when current estimates predict that 1 in 2 of us will get cancer in our lifetime. Did you know there are more than 200 types of cancer, and thanks to research many people are cured - but many are still sadly not, so there's much further to go!

There's a lot more I could say here - the dreaded 'C' word (capital C) has affected those closest to me in more ways than I could ever hope to imagine, in more ways than is surely humanely fair, and I have known and lost some wonderful people to the disease - so this is for them. I apologise that I'm no good at running marathons, doing spelling bees or getting into my knickers for a sponsored walk around London; but I promise I'll be as good as I can be at punching someone in the face and raising some money for a very worthy cause.

Thank you for reading (and donating)!