We have moved! Check out our new home…

Thanks for stopping by! You may have noticed that this site’s not been updated for a while, which is because we’ve moved to a new place. Please check out http://peoplerun.net for all of the latest news on the project.

Thanks!

Music to run races to – what are your favourite workout tunes?

There’s nothing like a set of awesome tunes being piped into your ears while the you’re out on a run to help you along (hitching a lift aside!) and with the Swindon 10K fast approaching, we want to start building the ultimate workout soundtrack with your help.

We’re looking for your suggestions for our newly created Spotify playlist and would love to get know what tunes you’re listening to during your workouts to help our fundraising runners during the first ever event that Project Peoplerun is getting involved in.

The theme for the list is upbeat and funky. The first three tracks in the mix are the Jackson Sisters, “I Believe In Miracles”, Jurassic 5, “Concrete Schoolyard” and Mr. Scruff, “Blackpool Roll” so hopefully that gives you a flavour to go on. We’re not asking for a whole heap of running themed tracks, but if you can’t help yourself, it’s sure to give us a chuckle when “I Think We’re Alone Now” pops into our ears on Sunday morning

So check out the list and let us know what else you listen to when you’re running by adding your suggestions below, on our Facebook page, or via Twitter. If you’re Tweeting, we’ve going to started up the hash tag #Peoplerun and see where it takes us, so feel free to include it in your posts too.

If, in the process, you’d also like to donate to Project Peoplerun through our Justgiving page, it would be awesome!

Cheers,

Dan.

Tags: 10k, charity, fundraising, music, playlist, running, spotify, workout

Swindon, here we come!

Crikey – we’re only a week away from the first ever Project Peoplerun race, the Swindon 10k on 21 November! Where has the time gone? Well, it’s not gone to waste, that’s for sure.

The training’s been done, the fundraising’s well underway – we’re at 4% of the target for the two year project already, new runners have signed up to race for Peoplerun (thanks Anthony, Sim and Ken) and we’re good to go!

We’ve continued to have loads of positive conversations with people who are planning to get involved with Peoplerun in the future and this means a huge amount to us.

If that includes you, please visit our Justgiving page and make a donation. It’s the first step in letting people know you intend to run and gets the fundraising ball rolling. Plus, it takes us a valuable step closer to our target of raising £5,000 for Naomi House.

On the online side of things, we’ve set up a Facebook page (the Group is still running too) and we’re doing some work on the blog too, which means there will soon be a lot more cool stuff we’ll be able to do with it to keep you updated. Big thanks go to Lee for all of his help with this.

Our thoughts are now turning to next Sunday and getting the first race under our belt. Start time is 11am and we’ll be posting updates and pics as soon as we can afterwards.

As always, thanks for taking the time get up to date with Project Peoplerun. More to follow soon.

Cheers,

Dan.

Tags: 10, charity, fundraising, peoplerun, running, sponsorship, Swindon

We Pay To Run – Why Not Join Us?

Aside from a couple of us sneaking in a great training run over the weekend – check out the rays in the picture below – we’ve also had loads of positive conversations over the past week with people who’ve said they’re keen to get involved to help raise funds for Project Peoplerun.

Catching some rays on the training run

This is great news and we can’t wait for the donations to start coming in, which is why we’ve been having a think about how you can help to get the ball rolling…

Show your intention to run and make a donation now

We really hope Peoplerun will encourage all kinds of folk to give running a go to help raise funds for Naomi House children’s hospice. If you are tempted to get involved, why not make a commitment now by donating to the project through our Justgiving page? It might be just the incentive you need to dust off/buy the running shoes and start working towards your target :0)

Become a race sponsor by match funding our entry fees

We’re also looking for race sponsors to match fund the entry fee that the core team is paying by donating through Justgiving. Each of the core team members will be paying the entry fee for the races we enter out of own pockets. We’re looking for a sponsor for each race to match fund the total entry fee for the core group of runners and in exchange we will happily make sure that our growing base of followers knows that you’ve supported us through blog posts, Tweets – possible even a pic with the team at the finish line.

Whether you’re a generous business person or a supportive individual, we’re open to suggestions and would love to get your support as a race sponsor. The Swindon 10k is your first opportunity to get involved, and it would cost you just £46 to match fund the entry fees. Tweet us, email us (projectpeoplerun at gmail dot com) or leave a comment below if you’re interested in getting involved!

Cheers,

Dan.

Small steps leading to Swindon

Wow – things have moved on a fair bit since our last post, so here’s where we’ve got to so far…

First of all, you’ll notice that the blog has been “tarted up” a bit. We’re not saying it’s perfect, but it’s a lot more eye-catching now than 11 days ago. We’re getting a crash course in WordPress and trying to decipher what can be done from what we actually NEED to do in order to get the best fundraising result, so we’ll continue to tweak it as we go.

Secondly, you’ll see from the sidebar to the right of the screen we’ve added our Twitter feed and a link to the newly created Justgiving page. The great news about this is that people now have an easy way to sponsor the project. But wait,  we hear you ask, what am I sponsoring you to do, exactly, and what’s the cause?

Well, the most important thing to tell you is that the money we raise through Project Peoplerun will go to Naomi House children’s hospice – a fantastic charity that does fantastic things for children and young people with life-limiting conditions and their families. Please visit their website for more info.

The next thing is to quickly re-cap on what we’re doing to encourage you to part with your hard-earned cash. We’re running 10, 10k races, a half marathon and a marathon and we’re asking for you to sponsor the project, rather than the individual runners. You can sponsor us for each race, get involved in a race to raise sponsorship money for the project yourself, encourage a friend to race – whatever you like! The most important thing is that we’d love you to get involved and to tell people about the project.

There’s a core group of people who have already commited to the entire project – we’ll introduce you to them in due course – but it’s not too late for you to get involved in the whole programme. The first race we’ll be running is the Swindon 10k on 21 November and you can sign up here if you’d like to join us!

We’ve got to run now (narf!) but we’ll be back with another update soon!

Cheers,

Dan.

Up and running – kind of!

I was chatting to a friend about running last night. We both recently took part in the Highclere 10k race after drunkenly agreeing to get involved about 2 months ago. I was pretty chuffed to have made it around the course (and in less than an hour!), given the lack of training time and fitness on my part and the fact that the last race I entered was the Amsterdam marathon in 2005.

At the time I was raising money for the MS Society having recently discovered that a very good friend had been diagnosed with the illness. I’d raised not far off £2,000 from generous friends, family and colleagues and I was looking forward to the big day. My knees, however, had a different plan. After just 3 miles, I was in agony and I eventually had to drop out after hobbling to the 10 mile mark. I was gutted.

If I’m honest, for the last 5 years I’d given up on the idea of trying to run in a race of any length. And I certainly didn’t want to be in a position where so many people had supported the fundraising efforts only to the let them down again. Now that I’ve actually completed a race – all be it a fraction of a marathon in terms of distance – I’ve started to think differently about running and fundraising. Then, this morning, I had a brainwave…

Enter Project Peoplerun: a community run, running community. The concept is simple (I hope!): A group of us are planning a two year project during time which we’ll enter 10, 10k races. In addition, this time next year (about half way through the 10x10k schedule) we’ll enter the Greath North Run. The following year, we’ll enter the Amsterdam marathon.

Along the way, we’ll be raising funds constantly for charity, not as individuals but as a community of runners. This means that if one of us is unable to participate or has to drop out of a race due to injury, one or more of the Project Peoplerun team will still be able to do it and the charity doesn’t miss out.

The part I’m really excited by is that we’ll be inviting people who aren’t able to commit to the full project to run in their own races – whatever distance or event they like, it doesn’t need to be one of the ones we’re planning to get involved with – and to raise money for the charitiy we’ll be supporting through Project Peoplerun. This means we have a great opportunity to build a community of fundrasing runners while giving the runners the freedom to choose whatever race they want to enter.

For some of us, we’ll be trying to beat our best time round the course while for others it will be a case of just getting around, but for everyone it will an opportunity to be involved in a sustained fundraising effort for a great cause.

So, right now this is little more than a concept. There’s lots of work to be done in terms of setting up the community, getting a logo made up, talking to my first target charity and building a schedule of the 10k races we plan to enter. Any genuine offers of help from those of you skilled in blogging, fundraising and otherwise raising awareness of the fledgling concept will be received with enthusiasm. I think we’ll be starting the 10k races with Swindon on 21 November, so I’m aiming to get some of the leg work underway between now and then.

In the meantime, feel free to share any thoughts or comments you may have – I’m all ears! Oh, and follow us on Twitter!

Dan.