Happily Ever After
Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, two cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running
Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.
Turning Down A Place
by Russell Turner - 22:08 on 04 August 2026
In a bold, possibly foolhardy, move I’ve turned down a London Marathon charity place offered to me by Spinal Research, which had caught my eye when it popped up on Facebook to encourage ballot failures to join TeamSpinal.
Several other charities are also touting for business but I thought that as someone with a dodgy spine (aka diffuse idiopathic skeletal hypostosis, also known as Forestier’s disease) it would be an appropriate team to join if Cats Protection, Breast Cancer Now, Age UK and Prostate Cancer UK ignore my overtures. I’ve also applied to Comic Relief. Blame Facebook for that too.
It’s not that the £2,500 fundraising target is too much (which it might be), because all the rest ask for the same (except BCN who want £2,750). It’s simply that when I delved further into the charity’s work I discovered that it’s targeted at people who are paralysed, probably in a wheelchair, so my inconveniently solid but painless spine is not much of a hook on which to hang appeals for money, especially as I don’t know anyone in that situation to run for.
Fundraising is hard, so I need a cause that means something personal. Spinal Research is worthy but not for me. Let’s hope my honesty is rewarded by one of the other charities.
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