At 8:17am yesterday morning I burst into tears as I crossed the finish line of The Moonwalk, the tears weren’t for me they were for Daniel as he had just completed the walk too! For those readers that don’t know about The Moonwalk it is a walk that takes place in London each year where 17,000 women (& a few men) walk 26.2 miles, a marathon, through the night to raise money for breast cancer charities.
Dan has wanted to take part in The Moonwalk since he was 5 years old in memory of his Nana. Last October the applications opened & I asked Dan if he would like to take part now that he was old enough to do it and he said “of course I do.”
We started training in January of this year and since then we have walked over 200 miles; just this training alone took huge commitment from Dan, with some training walks occuring after he had played a rugby match on a Sunday morning.
Yesterday evening finally saw the arrival of Dan’s challenge and he was full of confidence that he was going to be crossing the finishing line & collecting his medal on Sunday morning.
We left Hyde Park at 00:07 and as we left Nina Barough, the founder of Walk the Walk, spotted Dan and when she found out he was just 13 and was doing the walk she said “I am so proud of you for doing this, well done.” This spurred Dan on during the night as he kept asking “I’m going to make Nina prouder by finishing?”
The first 17 miles were a doddle for Dan and between miles 10 & 17 he took off by himself at a speed that neither I or Beverly could keep up with, we only caught up with him as he queued for a toilet break at The Royal Albert Hall. During this last third of the walk we walked past the Breakthrough Breast Cancer buildings where the name of Dan’s Nana is on a plaque – it was special for me to be able to show Dan this & I have to say I had to fight the tears back at this point.
From mile 19 onwards Dan started to struggle as his right ankle was starting to hurt, we slowed our pace and fuelled him with enery gel and jelly babies. The poor boy kept asking “are we nearly back at the park yet?” At mile 22 I really thought he was going to give up but thankfully a few fellow walkers saw he was hurting and gave him a huge confidence boost by telling him that he was amazing for doing the walk!
We reached the park around 7:30am and Dan got his second wind and he sped up, well sped up as much as you can after walking 24 miles. The last 1.2 miles seemed to go on for ever but with each step I could see the sense of acheivement growing in the face of my child.
We crossed the finish line at 8:17am and I immediately burst into tears – I was (and am) so VERY VERY VERY proud of what Dan achieved and I watched on with great pride as he received his finishers medal and a huge hug from the volunteer who told him “she was honoured to be giving him his medal.”
I hope Nina is proud of him too!
You can still donate to our fundraising pot too – simply click on the link below:
www.walkthewalkfundraising.org/BADmoonwalkers