'....sharing a tent with a father and his three sons. Had a fleeting thought that it would be great to do this with Alex, Greg and Georgie but don't worry guys this is the last one for me...'

Those are the words I posted during the Gobi March in 2010- a 250k self supported Ultra marathon race across the Gobi desert over six days-and at the time I meant it.

Since then I have (foolishly) completed a few other
similar events and even more foolishly for them, talked Alex, Greg and Georgie
to join me in the 2017 Grand To Grand ULTRA- 273k over six stages (Four days of
roughly a marathon a day, a double marathon day and final day a half marathon)
self-supported foot slog into the Grand Canyon USA.

Event dates are 24th to 29th of September 2017.

Add to the distance, the terrain (broken trails and lot of
SAND), the heat,  altitude and lots of climbing, carrying all gear other than a tent and putting up with boil in the bag meals for 6/7 days and attempting to do this as a family who now live in four different countries and so limited training time together and I hope
this gives you a sense of the challenges ahead. If not the attached link to the
Grand To Grand promo video may help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Ol7_q2fas

 So why are we doing this? As with all challenges many personal reasons drive the participants, for us it’s a chance for the four of us to experience and support each other through an event that very few people would even contemplate… is that enough? I hope so but to add to the challenge is the chance to see one of the natural wonders of the world up close and very
personal.

There is one other reason for undertaking this challenge and
that’s to raise funds. Raise funds for a charity that is very personal to us as
a family- RP Fighting Blindness www.rpfightingblindness.org.uk.

PLEASE NOTE- we are raising funds through the St James's Place Foundation to pass onto RP Fighting Blindness as they have generously offered to provide matching donations for every pound raised by us.

Why personal to us? Well simply Greg was diagnosed
with RP around 18 months ago and while he is in early stages, we have spent a lot of time since that moment investigating the impact of RP and the support and treatments available to fight this condition that frankly we knew little about before which given its impact on so many people is surprising. 1 in 3-4,000 people are affected by RP from mild conditions to complete blindness and at the moment there is no treatment for the condition.

We hope that you will kindly support our challenge with encouragement, kind words and of course donations.

If you want to follow the event and indeed our preparation/training (attempted training) then follow our facebook page: Rawson's grand to Grand Challenge https://www.facebook.com/rawsons-grand-to-grand-challenge-1438002276238611/ 

Alex, Greg Georgie and Mark Rawson