In my last blog, I talked about comfort zones and this week it’s about the team around me, who supported me along the way.
As a reminder, I signed up to trek in Iceland for three reasons:
- To raise money for a charity – the Sunshine fund does such great work providing specialised equipment to children with disabilities in the North East of England, individuals, groups, registered organisations, special and mainstream schools and hospitals can ask for our support to improve the lives of children with disabilities. You can read a little more about their work here.
- To challenge and stretch myself out of my comfort zones.
- To get fit.
I was doing the trek, but over the training period, during the trek and afterwards I had a huge number of people supporting me, I want to share what I learned from having a brilliant support team around me.
My Training team
I did the vast majority of my training on my own, but creating time for training meant relying on the team at New Results to give me space to get out and train, arriving later some mornings or leaving the office earlier in the day.
When I did train with others I found a number of ways to get some quality training support in. Norman met me early on weekend mornings for 6-mile walks around Durham and Sunderland, providing great chats and laughs while getting in good solid miles.
Richard was there for the first extended pub crawl/training walk of 12 miles (sorry I might have broken you and your Labrador Ollie a little).
Nic (Mrs Tynemouth), Darren, Matt, Karina, Alex, Alastair, Joy, Robin, Kevin, Ric, Margy and David all took part in extended training walks (pub crawls) that comprised of walking along Newcastle Quayside, crossing the river on the ferry to South Shields and ending in a curry.
Then the fundraising efforts
Everyone listed above (and so many more) helped out at events; attended events, made flyers, arranged support and giveaways, donated money, raffle prizes and most importantly their time to help me achieve my goals. Making an event successful and helping me get to my fundraising target simply would not have been possible without these people.
We organised charity supermarket bag packs, my family joined in; Neil, Julie, James and Laura as well as help from Mike, Yvonne, Karina and Jennifer. These bag packs really boosted the amounts raised for the charity.
Beyond that Mrs Tynemouth provided the moral support, time and space to allow me to train and get the distance in while making sure I was fuelled and helped by not having to worry about anything at home.
The trek support team
The leaders supporting us, cajoling the group along, providing medical assistance, moral and physical support to get the group through the trek, add to this the group that were trekking with me (more on all of this in the next blog).
Lastly, the support group that flew out to Reykjavik; Mrs Tynemouth, Karina, Darren and Matt. I can’t say how brilliant it was to see you folks at the end of the trek and the fact that you came and supported me. Then on returning to Edinburgh on the flight home, Alex catches the train up to meet us. You should know that Alex roped me into this trek, but then found she couldn’t make it, she did everything she could to support me along the way, boosting both my morale and fund-raising total with all her efforts. Then finally Jo, who picked us up from Newcastle train station with a welcome home banner written in Icelandic.
What did I learn doing a trek in Iceland? It’s a team effort, you need the right people around you at the right times doing the right things? Without all of the people listed above (and so many more) I could not have completed the trek.
Get a good team around you, you can achieve so much more than you expect.
What about the trek itself? Well, that’s next week’s blog!
