Tri4Joe
Fighting against leukodystrophy

On Monday 27 October 2008, Paul Hickey and Ciaran McNally, ran the Dublin City Marathon (26.2 miles) for ELA via Tri4Joe.  Paul posted an impressively speedy 2 hours 45 minutes time and Ciaran finished in a very respectable time of just over 4 hours.  We are so pleased that Paul and Ciaran have chosen to raise money for the European Leukodystrophy Association.  Paul is a native of my home town in Fermoy, Co. Cork and Ciaran is originally from Castlebar, Co. Mayo.  Thank you both so much.

The eight Irish women that I wrote about in our last post have done a truly magnificent job by completing the Evening Echo Ladies Cork City mini marathon and raising 1,500 euros for the European Leukodystrophy Association.

Thank you so much to Dee, Ger, Sharon, Maria, Deirdre, Kathy, Sinead, and Aideen, all of whom finished the 4 mile run in very respectable times.  Thanks too to a group of young people from Mayfield who designed and painted a beautiful banner for the day.  We know how much work and effort everyone has put in to raise so much money and to also raise awareness about Leukodystrophy.

Thanks also to the wonderful husbands, partners, cousins and friends who came out on the day to cheer and shout in support of the girls.  Although, my three year old nephew, Caolan, is still confused as to why his Mammy ran past and didn’t stop to say hello!

The Irish Run4Joe spirit of awareness building and fundraising will continue over the coming weeks thanks to Ciaran McNally and Paul Hickey who will run the Dublin City Marathon on 27th October 2008.  Thank you both so much – more info on all of this to come.

Well the title says it all!

Last week Colette and Joseph spent the week in Ireland with her family.  When they came back Colette had a fistful of cheques representing the last of the money that we have raised as a result of Tri4Joe.  This means that we are now, finally, able to post a big grand total – and here it is:

• Myelin Project UK: around 8500GBP excluding Gift Aid which is about 28%.  This will equate to over 10,000GBP or 12,500 Euros in metric money.  All the money has been sent to the Myelin Project and we’re waiting to get the final exact amount that they’ve received (the uncertainty is because I know that they’ve received donations made directly to them).
• European Leukodystrophy Association (ELA): just under 17,500 Euros!  But there’s still more to come: the company that I work for, Sun Microsystems, has a “matching” scheme whereby they will match all donations that we’ve received from fellow employees upto 1000USD or equivalent.  That equates to another 650 Euros once the paperwork has been completed.

I’m sure I remember saying this before, but if anyone had told me that we were going to raise over

10,000 Euros way back at the start of 2008 I’d have laughed at them.  We’re completely amazed at everyone’s kindness and generosity.  In fact, I personally feel quite ashamed that I didn’t have much faith in human nature!  Well I’m no longer such a cynic – thank you so much everybody!

The sum above does not just represent the results of a single fund raising effort.  In fact, inspired by Tri4Joe, some people have already organized their own events in aid of Tri4Joe, for which we want to say a special thank you:

• Dartford Roadrunners Running Club: they organized a barbeque and raffle after their club championships and donated all the money raised to Tri4Joe.
• Fermoy Mothers Group: who hosted a coffee afternoon and raffle and donated all the proceeds to Tri4Joe.  Also, as a result of the publicity this event received, we ended up getting coverage in all of the major Irish national papers!  So this had a completely unexpected bonus of spreading awareness of Leukodystrophy across Ireland.
• Ride4Joe: very recently members of our old triathlon club organized a charity training bike ride which was covered in a recent post.
• Garden4Joe: ok I made that name up!  Recently, a former neighbour of mine in London, Sheila Kennedy, who is now living in Ireland opened up her garden for people from her gardening club to come and visit.  All the money raised was donated to Tri4Joe.
• Cuchulainn Cycling Club: organized their very own Irish version of Ride4Joe and donated all the proceeds to Tri4Joe.

It would be lovely if we could thank everybody by name, especially those who have gone the extra mile generating awareness and collecting donations, you know who you are and we thank you all.

I mentioned in a previous post that there are going to be a number of new fund raising efforts coming up in the next year.  These include: a couple of friends of ours who are going to do the Cape Epic mountain bike race in South Africa (they’ve called their team Epic4Joe!); some friends of ours in the UK are organizing an event, which they are going to call Run4Joe, where they will run the Beachy Head Marathon on the south coast of England; some of Colette’s relatives and friends are going to do the Cork Mini-Marathon at the end of September.  We’ll start blogging about these events very soon.

Want to organize something yourself?

If you’re interested in raising money for the battle to find a cure for Leukodystrophy, then feel free to contact us and let us know what you’re going to do.  We can put a blog about it here on Tri4Joe.

You’ll also be very interested to know that very soon the Myelin Project UK will be a charity which is registered on JustGiving.com.  So, if you’re UK based, you will be able to easily create your own fund raising page – do tell us though and we can put a link to it on Tri4Joe!  I’ll let you all know when this is up and running.