10.

Meet this week’s Teacher Feature…

Ellie’s Story…

“I would rather completely miss a bus than run for it, and forget Sports Day at work…”

2020….a huge year of change! 

During the first lockdown last year my dad and I saw a tweet from our local charity, Compton Care, asking for volunteers to do a 5k Tough Mudder run. My grandparents both received phenomenal care at Compton Care at the end of their lives and so we decided to raise some money and give something back. Someone did it for my grandparents and dad’s parents so we would do it for someone else’s. 

Now just some background information, we were complete non runners!! I would rather completely miss a bus than run for it, and forget Sports Day at work, I always came last in the staff race and would desperately try to sit out of it! 

“I do find that after a challenging day in the classroom a good run clears your mind and prepares you for another day.”

So we signed up for the Tough Mudder and with the help of the Couch to 5K app we set off running around the garden at home. You may wonder why the garden but we were mortified to go out in public! After 5 weeks we braved it and finally hit the roads! Now, it may have been at 5.30am before school to avoid embarrassment, but we kept running and completed the course! 

Unfortunately, due to Covid 19 the original Tough Mudder had to be cancelled however we had already started fundraising and decided to carry on. When the big day came around we ran 11k (which was our longest run at the time) and completed a mini assault course in the garden at home. In total with gift aid we raised over £1800.

Keen to not lose the momentum we decided to continue running after the event and progressed to 15k, 20k and then before we knew it a half marathon! Please don’t think that any of this was easy, we’ve suffered injury set backs, mental blocks but together we have cheered each other on on and kept going. Our running motto is ‘nobody gets left behind’, we are always there for each other, whether it’s a 1K run or 30K! 

Fast forward to January this year and we saw another tweet from Compton Care… but this time it was for the London Marathon!! After some deliberation we thought why not, we’ve come this far so let’s go for it! We’ve worked our running schedule around staff and phase meetings and I do find that after a challenging day in the classroom a good run clears your mind and prepares you for another day. We’ve currently raised over £4000 for Compton Care and I know nan and grandad would be proud, we will keep running and keep raising those much needed funds. 

Our story just goes to show that anyone can run! We’ve gone from running 10 seconds round the garden to a full marathon in less than a year. You can literally do anything if you put your mind to it. I now will sprint for a bus and I was extremely excited for Sports Day this year where I came 3rd in the running race! 

With the big day approaching in October we will enjoy our run, the gruelling training is the hard part but the actual day will be our victory lap! 

Click the link bellow to follow Ellie’s running journey on Twitter and to donate to her JustGiving page!!!