Mike's EU Marathons

Hi all

I wondered if you could help me out a bit. As you know I've been running these marathons for a while around Europe and I'm now getting to the point where the countries I have left (with the exception of Iceland) are pretty small in terms of ME support/awareness and it's getting understandably harder to find ME patients to interview. Just due to the population sizes of places like Bosnia, Andorra, San Marino etc.

I won't share this question anywhere else. But I'd love to know, what can I do with my running that would help more to raise funds and awareness to the cause?

I'm concerned that mopping up marathons in these tiny countries only serves to get me press as a marathon collector but if I'm not meeting people, helping them lobby their governments, highlighting their stories or at least raising money it feels a bit pointless and just expensive for me to fund.

I'm 12 years into helping Invest In ME now and still as committed as ever.

Shall I 'finish' Europe? Try and run some bigger races? Start running Ultras? What would help you the most. Throw any ideas at me!

Thanks

Mike
 
Don't know if it would appeal, Mike, but one idea might be to approach all the main ME/CFS charities in Britain and Ireland, to see if there's interest in getting together a small group of their supporters to run a European marathon? There might be folk who'd quite like to do Paris or Amsterdam for instance, but wouldn't go on their own.

Making it a coalition of charities (hopefully including ones in the host nation) might be a way to make a bigger splash. It wouldn't necessarily result in a big sum for any charity individually, but they'd all get both donations and publicity. The runners would benefit from your experience in registering for places, sorting accommodation, getting in touch with locals, etc—and they'd all have different networks of friends and colleagues they could tap up for sponsorship.
 
Kitty said:
Don't know if it would appeal, Mike, but one idea might be to approach all the main ME/CFS charities in Britain and Ireland, to see if there's interest in getting together a small group of their supporters to run a European marathon? There might be folk who'd quite like to do Paris or Amsterdam for instance, but wouldn't go on their own.

Making it a coalition of charities (hopefully including ones in the host nation) might be a way to make a bigger splash. It wouldn't necessarily result in a big sum for any charity individually, but they'd all get both donations and publicity. The runners would benefit from your experience in registering for places, sorting accommodation, getting in touch with locals, etc—and they'd all have different networks of friends and colleagues they could tap up for sponsorship.
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Thanks for the reply Kitty.

That's a great suggestion. I'll have a good think about it.

I know that the ME charities don't really see eye to eye most of the time. I can imagine I'd get a lot of negative comments for collaborating with Action For ME for example. I could leave them out though I guess.

It would be a huge logistical project to put together and manage which I don't have the time for whilst my kids are still very young. But definitely something to consider in the future.
 
Mike Harley said:
Thanks for the reply Kitty.

That's a great suggestion. I'll have a good think about it.

I know that the ME charities don't really see eye to eye most of the time. I can imagine I'd get a lot of negative comments for collaborating with Action For ME for example. I could leave them out though I guess.

It would be a huge logistical project to put together and manage which I don't have the time for whilst my kids are still very young. But definitely something to consider in the future.
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Most of the UK ME charities collaborate through Forward ME. Invest in ME do good work with their research funding and conferences, but they tend not to want to work with the other charities. I don't know why.

Action for ME are much better than in the past. Their collaboration with Decode ME and future research with Chris Ponting is very positive.

I think both AfME and the MEA have volunteers running marathons or half marathons as part of their fundraising, so if you wanted to join with them you wouldn't necessarily need to do the organising.
 
I suppose the other aspect is what you’re into and perhaps where the interest from others is? Ultras and backyards seem to have a bit of a cult following and quite a social and community aspect too which may be something you/we could tap into? There seems to be no shortage of events around the country and around Europe. I was talking to someone recently who brought up this group https://lhgrunclub.com/
 
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