Charity fundraising has been hit very hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thousands of fundraising events have been cancelled and many charities, particularly smaller ones like Solving Kids' Cancer are struggling to maintain services because of this huge reduction in income (see below for more information on SKC).

To help raise vital funds a number of my closest running friends are grouping together to complete a range of challenges on or around the 26th April - the original planned date for the London Marathon. For our part, Nick Bird and I will be attempting a Plank Tag Challenge with the aim of reaching a target of 26 minutes between us. 

We are both middle-aged blokes with abs like chewing gum. We have 8 days to train so this will be one heck of a challenge. The event will be live streamed via zoom. If you would like to watch the pair of us suffer, we're asking for a donation of £13 for a virtual ticket, although note that we cannot guarantee that you will be able to watch so any donation you make is done so without expectation of anything in return.

If you want to join us and make it last plankers planking wins then £26 is the minimum donation that gets you team entry (£13 each). Your planking partner can be co-located, remote, but not imaginary. Anybody who can plank for more than 10-minutes themselves is deemed ineligible on the grounds of already being a complete planker.

The rules are simple: one team member must be planking at any one time. You may rotate at intervals of 1 minute upwards. To make it more of a challenge we will start with a 3 min plank each then 2 x 2 mins each then as many 1 min planks as possible. You can choose to join us or choose your own strategy. The winner is the pair who keep going for the longest. 

Solving Kids' Cancer's mission is to save the lives of children suffering from neuroblastoma, a deadly childhood cancer that affect mostly infants and toddlers. Every 10 days a child will die of this disease in the UK alone, despite the most intensive treatment regimens of any type of cancer. As a premier funder of clinical trials, Solving Kids' Cancer is driving forward new research into finding more effective treatments to give children better options, and parents and families more hope for the future. Our charity also provides direct emotional and financial support to families, and supports individual fundraising campaigns for children whose best chance of survival may be in accessing promising clinical trials not yet available in the UK.

Thanks so much for your support!