‘Twas three weeks before Christmas, of that there’s no doubt,
9 mentors came together, to run for ReachOut
Running shoes on, red hat covering hair,
With thousands more Santa’s, good times we did share.
My mother told me that Santa didn’t exist. But on Sunday, December 4th, 2016…she was proved wrong. On that brisk Sunday morning, thousands of people descended upon Victoria Park for London’s biggest Santa Run. Among those thousands of people, were nine courageous ReachOut mentors braving the cold to raise as much money as possible.
Our 9 Santa’s left their reindeer behind and met at 10:00am
at Victoria Park. After bonding over shared mentoring experiences and Santa
outfits, there was a big stage warm up to get all the Santa’s limbered up ready
to run either 5k or 10k. The warm up was absolutely brilliant, with a fitness
instructor on stage guiding proceedings, while thousands of Santa’s imitated
her moves. It was actually quite terrifying seeing thousands of Santa’s move in
unison while shouting “Woop, Woop!”.
After the warm-up, the few thousand Santa’s lined up ready
to start the run. If the warm up was terrifying, this was on another level.
With the sound of the horn, Victoria Park became a sea of red and white Santa
Clauses.
6 of our runners took part in the 5km run, while 3 took part
in the 10km and all of them completed the run in great time! Especially
considering they were all wearing Santa outfits! After the run, a few of the 5km
runners were able to grab hot drinks and have a chat before heading off to
enjoy the rest of their Sunday afternoons.
Not only do our mentors do extremely important work each week with their mentees, they also love to get involved in fundraising opportunities. Our 9 Santa’s managed to raise a fantastic £1,000! It was such a fun day, and a great experience for everyone involved and we look forward to being involved in it again in 2017.
Finally, on behalf of ReachOut, a huge thank you to Shanet,
Emanuela, Hester, Qiao, Clemence, Josephine, Lizzy, Katherine and Julia who are
all fantastic mentors and fundraisers!
They are now extremely busy getting ready for December 25th…Good luck guys!
