I’m Beki and I work for Oxfam. At Oxfam, I oversee all of our challenge events including London Marathon where we have over 100 people in #TeamOxfam. Last week, due to worries around coronavirus, London Marathon was postponed until October. Whilst I completely agree with the event organiser’s decision to put the health and wellbeing of our runners first, I can’t help but be disappointed at the news.

#TeamOxfam are so special to me, each of our runners choosing to run for Oxfam for their own reasons. They have all been so dedicated in their training and fundraising, each of them will have trained for an average of 4 months by this point, completely changing their lifestyles to fit in their training runs and changing their diets. They were just over 1 month away from the event itself, meaning they were achieving great distances in their training and were getting increasingly nervous and excited.

Postponing to October will mean that once again, #TeamOxfam will be changing their lifestyles to get ready for this new date, prolonging their training period to reach the start line. As I said before, these guys are pretty awesome, so I can’t help but feel like I need to support them however I can.

I now find myself pretty free between the 21^st and 26^th April, when I would have been in London at the London Marathon Running Show and the event itself, cheering and motivating our runners across the finish line. So to stand in solidarity with #TeamOxfam, I will be running the London Marathon… sort of.

Between the 21^st and 26^th April, I will run the distance of London Marathon (26.2 miles) and log my mileage on Strava. Now I know what you’re thinking; “But your runners are doing a marathon in 1 day, but you’re doing it across 6 days?”. Let me add some context – my last
proper long distance run was the Great South Run in 2017. I’m a netballer, sprinting is more my thing. Long distance running is really hard for me. I have 5 weeks to get it together.

It won’t be fast. It won’t be pretty. So I’m asking you to sponsor me and show your solidarity – not just with me, but for #TeamOxfam, the other 39,900 London Marathon hopefuls and everyone else involved in the events industry that have had months of training and planning scuppered by coronavirus.

Why donate to me? Apart from feeling sorry for me, or to get me to shut up, there are so many reasons why Oxfam needs donations more than ever. From women's rights to water, earthquakes to education, we do life-changing, groundbreaking work in all sorts of areas. You can help by donating;

• £10 could buy a chicken, giving a family income to pay for essentials by selling eggs
• £25 can provide safe water for 25 people
• £50 can help farmers to grow more food to feed their families
• £100 can provide a better education, and a brighter future

Thank you for taking the time to visit my page and read my story. You can follow my progress on Instagram, @bekiosborne