Journal of IiME Volume 8 Issue 1 more has all been captured on video which we are furiously editing ready for view! The team met with Richard from Invest In ME who had been such a huge help and we had another fantastic food parcel! With a man down and a midnight finish we decided that there was no way we wanted to let everyone down and no matter the cost or effort, we were going to finish the event. Day four was actually pretty enjoyable despite covering a huge distance and over 24 clubs. These including pitch side photos at Aston Villa and with yet more club and paper support but we had become a well-oiled machine running on a diet of ghastly energy drinks and service station sandwiches. It was tough physically and mentally to keep going with just two drivers and the ‘media team’ in the back trying to keep up with messaging and posting to our social media which had become such an important part of the event. We met up with James Smith at Burton Albion whose mum suffers from ME and he came with us onto the pitch just before kick off at their home game and with one of their players we were photographed for the local papers –this was again another huge highlight for us and his mum baked us some delicious cakes! After a feature on Radio 5Live a lady from Scunthorpe drove over to the ground especially to make a donation which again was simply an amazing feeling for us. May 2014 actually opened up the ground bringing one of the players along for a photo as well as featuring us on their website and match day programme. We moved on towards Bradford and met one of our supporters whose partner suffers from ME and he came along especially with the local newspaper to give us a cash donation. Again we were incredibly moved and meet-ups like this really kept us going. Later in the day Manchester United not only allowed us onto the pitch but their fantastic staff showed us the dressing rooms and players lounge which was a fantastic bonus. More programme features, papers and twitter support followed as we broke through the £3K mark. Ending up in Carlisle at 10pm we knew that the final day would be a lot easier with just 7 clubs left to go. On day six we met up with Paul Kayes from ‘Lets Do It For ME’ at Middlesbrough and he was a real inspiration to us (as he had been throughout the entire project) as well as other ME sufferers we met there who had contacted the club to open their doors to us. A fantastic welcome from the club and another signed pennant as we left for our final two clubs. We finally finished at Leicester City (which we had moved from day four) and were thoroughly shattered but enormously delighted to have completed the challenge in what was just over 80 travelling hours. It’s an incredibly unfair and seemingly indiscriminate condition and we’re all passionately behind any event that sees a move towards a cure or better treatment. We targeted ourselves on reaching an audience of 10 million people which with the help of being featured on ITV news in 10 regions, BBC Radio 5 Live, the 30+ newspapers and over 70 clubs we feel that we have more than achieved this. Day five included a start at York City where someone at the club got wind of the club’s initial refusal to support us and he contacted us to apologise, taking matters into his own hands he The sheer volume of anonymous donations that have come in prove that there is a real clamour to get this illness properly researched and a Invest in ME (Charity Nr. 1114035) www.investinme.org Page 20 of 52
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