Fundraising

Marathon Effort By Alan Wood

We recently sent a cheque for £662 to the society; the money was raised by Alan Wood, a fireman colleague of mine. Alan is 28 years old; he has been a fireman for three years, stationed at Stratford Fire Station on the Green Watch.

Alan was recently married to his childhood sweetheart Charlotte. They live together in Hornchurch, Essex with their 18 month old son Charlie. Before I told Alan about the condition suffered by our ten year old daughter Olivia, he, like many other people had never heard of Vitiligo. Yet he immediately said that he would run the London marathon 2009 to raise funds for the Vitiligo Society, for which we are truly grateful.

Alan’s time by the way was 3 hours and 20 minutes. A time that he wasn’t particularly impressed with, but we certainly were.

The picture on the right shows Olivia and Alan just after the marathon.

David and Vicki

The photograph on the left was taken on the 6th September, 2009, at the Adidas Women's Race in Hyde Park. There are over 30,000 runners taking part, every one of them supporting a charity. Lucy, Becca and Jess were all running for the Vitiligo Society.

It gets quite emotional going around as quite a few of them have messages and sometimes photographs on their backs; “For my father who died from cancer”.

I'm always amazed at the diversity of the people running. I'd recommend it to anyone. You don't need to run, I don't and it takes about an hour or so to get around. The organisation for this event is excellent as they have to stagger the thousands of runners taking part. We all love the goodie bag at the end too!