Tri4Joe

We’ve just come back from the opening ceremony of The ELA Cup organized by our local football team AS Gresivaudan at Pontcharra. The football tournament kicks off tomorrow and has attracted 16 under-13 teams from around the Isere region and further afield. In fact, three of the teams have travelled by bus all they way from Bulgaria – 2000km away!

We first heard about the tournament when AS Gresivaudan’s Thierry Pineau gave us a call after reading about Tri4Joe in the local Isere Magazine. His football club organized a similar event last year with huge success and raised well over 3000 Euros for ELA. Impressive, but perhaps more importantly, due to the nature of the event, they raised awareness of leukodystrophy throughout the region. In fact they received two full pages of coverage in the regional Dauphine Libere newspaper (personally I’m a big fan of this newspaper because it sponsors one of my favorite cycling races – the Criterium Dauphine).

Thierry is very keen to grow the tournament over the coming years and is particularly keen to attract teams from all over Europe. To that end, if you are reading this and know of any under-13 teams that may be interested in visiting a beautiful part of France to play in a football tournament in 2010 then please drop me an email (matthew dot swift at gmail dot com) or leave a comment here on the blog.

Thierry and, I imagine, the rest of his fellow club members are clearly very passionate about the event and its cause and have done a superb job organizing it. It never ceases to amaze me how many selfless and fundamentally good people there are out there. It’s days like this that I feel really humbled and it makes me realize how selfish and self-centered I was in my previous life before Joseph.

I’ll report back after the tournament and let you know how it went.

Thank you Thierry and everyone at AS Gresivaudan.

I have just received Mark’s report of the final stage of the Cape Epic which you can read on the diary.

Thank you to everyone who has supported them. Together you have raised well over two thousand pounds for the Myelin Project UK. We really appreciate it.

On Monday 27 October 2008, Paul Hickey and Ciaran McNally, ran the Dublin City Marathon (26.2 miles) for ELA via Tri4Joe.  Paul posted an impressively speedy 2 hours 45 minutes time and Ciaran finished in a very respectable time of just over 4 hours.  We are so pleased that Paul and Ciaran have chosen to raise money for the European Leukodystrophy Association.  Paul is a native of my home town in Fermoy, Co. Cork and Ciaran is originally from Castlebar, Co. Mayo.  Thank you both so much.

The eight Irish women that I wrote about in our last post have done a truly magnificent job by completing the Evening Echo Ladies Cork City mini marathon and raising 1,500 euros for the European Leukodystrophy Association.

Thank you so much to Dee, Ger, Sharon, Maria, Deirdre, Kathy, Sinead, and Aideen, all of whom finished the 4 mile run in very respectable times.  Thanks too to a group of young people from Mayfield who designed and painted a beautiful banner for the day.  We know how much work and effort everyone has put in to raise so much money and to also raise awareness about Leukodystrophy.

Thanks also to the wonderful husbands, partners, cousins and friends who came out on the day to cheer and shout in support of the girls.  Although, my three year old nephew, Caolan, is still confused as to why his Mammy ran past and didn’t stop to say hello!

The Irish Run4Joe spirit of awareness building and fundraising will continue over the coming weeks thanks to Ciaran McNally and Paul Hickey who will run the Dublin City Marathon on 27th October 2008.  Thank you both so much – more info on all of this to come.

Eight Irish women, including my sister, Sharon, and my sister-in-law, Deirdre, will line up this weekend (Sunday 28 September) and Run4Joe to raise money and awareness for the European Leukodystrophy Association (ELA) at the Cork Ladies Mini Marathon.  The mini marathon consists of a 4 mile run through Cork City.

A big thank you to each one of you: Deirdre Dennigan (Mayo & Midleton), Sharon Maher (Fermoy), Ger McNally (Mayo), Sinead Pyne (Midleton), Aideen Donnellan (Midleton), Deirdre O’Dwyer (Fermoy), Kathy Brown (Mayo) and Maria Dickenson (Liverpool & Dublin).  Your efforts are very much appreciated.  We look forward to getting a full update with some pics after the event.  The best of luck to each of you.

Well the title says it all!

Last week Colette and Joseph spent the week in Ireland with her family.  When they came back Colette had a fistful of cheques representing the last of the money that we have raised as a result of Tri4Joe.  This means that we are now, finally, able to post a big grand total – and here it is:

• Myelin Project UK: around 8500GBP excluding Gift Aid which is about 28%.  This will equate to over 10,000GBP or 12,500 Euros in metric money.  All the money has been sent to the Myelin Project and we’re waiting to get the final exact amount that they’ve received (the uncertainty is because I know that they’ve received donations made directly to them).
• European Leukodystrophy Association (ELA): just under 17,500 Euros!  But there’s still more to come: the company that I work for, Sun Microsystems, has a “matching” scheme whereby they will match all donations that we’ve received from fellow employees upto 1000USD or equivalent.  That equates to another 650 Euros once the paperwork has been completed.

I’m sure I remember saying this before, but if anyone had told me that we were going to raise over

10,000 Euros way back at the start of 2008 I’d have laughed at them.  We’re completely amazed at everyone’s kindness and generosity.  In fact, I personally feel quite ashamed that I didn’t have much faith in human nature!  Well I’m no longer such a cynic – thank you so much everybody!

The sum above does not just represent the results of a single fund raising effort.  In fact, inspired by Tri4Joe, some people have already organized their own events in aid of Tri4Joe, for which we want to say a special thank you:

• Dartford Roadrunners Running Club: they organized a barbeque and raffle after their club championships and donated all the money raised to Tri4Joe.
• Fermoy Mothers Group: who hosted a coffee afternoon and raffle and donated all the proceeds to Tri4Joe.  Also, as a result of the publicity this event received, we ended up getting coverage in all of the major Irish national papers!  So this had a completely unexpected bonus of spreading awareness of Leukodystrophy across Ireland.
• Ride4Joe: very recently members of our old triathlon club organized a charity training bike ride which was covered in a recent post.
• Garden4Joe: ok I made that name up!  Recently, a former neighbour of mine in London, Sheila Kennedy, who is now living in Ireland opened up her garden for people from her gardening club to come and visit.  All the money raised was donated to Tri4Joe.
• Cuchulainn Cycling Club: organized their very own Irish version of Ride4Joe and donated all the proceeds to Tri4Joe.

It would be lovely if we could thank everybody by name, especially those who have gone the extra mile generating awareness and collecting donations, you know who you are and we thank you all.

I mentioned in a previous post that there are going to be a number of new fund raising efforts coming up in the next year.  These include: a couple of friends of ours who are going to do the Cape Epic mountain bike race in South Africa (they’ve called their team Epic4Joe!); some friends of ours in the UK are organizing an event, which they are going to call Run4Joe, where they will run the Beachy Head Marathon on the south coast of England; some of Colette’s relatives and friends are going to do the Cork Mini-Marathon at the end of September.  We’ll start blogging about these events very soon.

Want to organize something yourself?

If you’re interested in raising money for the battle to find a cure for Leukodystrophy, then feel free to contact us and let us know what you’re going to do.  We can put a blog about it here on Tri4Joe.

You’ll also be very interested to know that very soon the Myelin Project UK will be a charity which is registered on JustGiving.com.  So, if you’re UK based, you will be able to easily create your own fund raising page – do tell us though and we can put a link to it on Tri4Joe!  I’ll let you all know when this is up and running.

Yesterday a friend of ours, Graham Hiscock of SEEDS Cycling, together with many friends of ours from our old triathlon and cycling clubs in the UK (White Oak Tri Squad and Old Portlians CC) organized a charity bicycle ride around Kent which they aptly named Ride4Joe.  But it wasn’t just our old friends who came along – special thanks should also go to the many individuals who also took part and also to Crystal Palace Tri Club who turned up on mass.

The ride was a big success, despite the bad weather, with around 50 riders turning up to take on the 62 mile (about 100km) very hilly route around the Kent countryside.  The course was one of my old favorites including tough climbs like the Ashdown Forest and the infamous knee-breaker of Toys Hill (I still have haunting nightmares of facing this hill at the end of a big ride in the depths of winter and wondering if I’d ever get to the top!).

Graham has written his own write up which includes a complete course description for people wishing to ride it themselves.  All in all the event raised an impressive 350GBP and continued to raise awareness of Leukodystrophy.

Myself, Colette, and Joseph would like to thank from the bottom of our hearts everyone who took part and especially to Graham for coming up with the idea and going to so much effort to organize it – and doing such a great job.

Thank you!