by Lianne Murray, organizer for " From Here to Kenya", the marathon relay team from Southwest River United Church
I have been a participant of the PEI marathon weekend since it began. Last year, when I ran the full marathon, I was lucky enough to know one of the relay teams. While they cheered for each other, they also cheered me on. They looked to be having such fun that I thought that I had to get a team together for the next year.
For the past few years, I have been involved in organizing a fun run that raised money for the school in Kenya our church supported so I wanted to continue with that.
We have several runners in our congregation and lots of walkers so I knew we could easily form a team.
We had 8 people on our team; there are 8 legs in the marathon relay. Ages ranged! We had 2 in university, we had a grandmother.
We had two fundraisers in church. The first one was a water bottle challenge. We chose this since it was fitting. Water is something we take for granted but Nkando needed water tanks.
If you fill a water bottle with dimes you get $100. We collected for 4 weeks. People started adding bigger change and bills! A slot had to be added to our bottles so it could receive toonies and loonies!
The second fundraiser was a map of the marathon route broken down into kilometres showing where each team member had to run. Five dollars sponsored a kilometre. We also collected sponsorship from friends and family.
Race day came and the weather was perfect! We had our 8 runners and walkers, 3 drivers and family and friends for support!
I think we were the only team out there with signs and banners and I'm sure we cheered the loudest!
We had such a great time...I think team " From Here to Kenya" is just getting started!
