The Belfast City Marathon is Northern Ireland’s largest sporting event with 17,500 people taking part every year. The race day includes a fun run a full marathon, an 8 mile walk and a wheel chair race, but it was the relay event that caught our attention.

Over the years myself, Adam and many of our family and friends have participated in the relay marathon for another small local charity that my aunt established called the Royal RVH Liver Support Group. Inspired by the great memories of having previously taken part in the relay marathon and thinking that there is strength in numbers we quickly set our sights on assembling teams to run on 4th May 2015 for Caring Matters Now. The response we received was overwhelming. We had family fly over from England to participate, friends jumped straight on board. Then came the friends of friends, people we see every week, people we hadn’t seen in years and people that we had never met. Then came aunts, uncles, cousins volunteering to walk the 8 mile Marathon. In the end we had 24 relay runners and 12 people walking. We could not believe it.

We set a fundraising target for the team of £2,500, we felt so grateful for the support of all these people we didn’t know what to expect in terms of fundraising. The response was again remarkable. One week after the marathon the total is £9,365… and the money is still rising. We are truly grateful for the support we have received from our friends and family and we are delighted to be able give something back to Caring Matters Now.

Bronagh