Some of you may recognise the reference to the inspiring PetesGaff thread about his struggle having been diagnosed with cancer.

Some of you may have heard about Team Bullheart and our plan to ride mountain Mayhem.

Well I have been inspired by Marks amazing story and am part of Team Bullheart. The purpose of the ride is to raise money for Marks chosen charity, The Sarcoma Trust, but the reason I am riding is because I was inspired by Mark and feel honored to ride along side him.

Anyway, the purpose of the ride is to raise money and Mark (Mr Bulheart, PetesGaff) has set a target of $750 per person. I am not sure how he is going to monitor this but please can you all follow this link and donate a load of money.

http://www.justgiving.com/TeamBullheart

Please can you put WCA* in the comments after you have completed the donation so we can keep track of who you are supporting.

*If you don’t like me then put another team members name in there. I really don’t care why you give the money, [geldof]just give us your blooody money[/geldoff]

Instead of buy a 911, why not just pay £750 yourself? Just asking like.

iDave – There are lots of people in Team Bullheart who cannot easily get £750. Stick their name in the comments box

Feel free to donate with soma_rich or anyone else so they get the most raised. I am not doing this for an ego trip. This is not one of my troll threads.

What’s scary about a raising £750 ?

j_me – it is a reference to Marks original thread which acted as a diary of his progress and was honest, amazing and inspiring reading. (Can anyone put up a link to it?).

It was titled something like ‘I have been diagnosed with cancer and am feeling a little scared’. Mark, the master of understatement as usual.

Anyway, this thread is not about me, it is about raising money for Marks charity. Please let the next post be someone confirming that they have donated.

Cheers All

Yep, I saw the thread.

Anyways, top effort, good luck etc

Actually, raising £750 is a tall order, my family & work colleagues are suffering from sponsor fatigue.
I could do with some help to cast my net too to raise the money for Team Bullheart.

Please let the next post be someone confirming that they have donated

I had donated before posting, and wish you all the best.
Sorry, I did’t put anyones name next to it, if anyone’s short at the end of the day feel free to nab my donation to top up their sponsorship.

j_me – It is the donation that counts, not the name. Cheers

napalm – This was my idea. My family and friends are also charity tired. I did 2 years of Big Bike Bash for charity remember? Now get off my thread!!! 😉

I’m in team bullheart…

I’m not just going to settle for doing the mayhem…

I’m riding LEJOG (I only have a mtb) anybody fancy joining me for legs of it?
I’m doing the 24 hr 3 peaks (hopefully)
I’m going to be sleeping in a bivi bag for the welsh ride thing (I hate camping)
I’m tempted to do the 24 hr at Mayhem and the 24/12… some traing tips might be good 😉

I am tremendously reserved about asking for money off of people though. And yes I see sponsor fatigue hitting already 🙁

750 is not so bad.

Break it down.

Lets say you can get £200 from family and friends.

Do you work in a place with more than 50 people? If you do how about a bonus ball sweep stake? Choose a number (pull from hat) £10 each for 10 weeks (£1 per number per week). Winner each week gets £20.

Income = £490, outgoings =£200, profit = £290.

So you now have £200+290 = 490.

Do other things as a team, charity car wash? Organise a Ball? (£20k raised one year doing this), race night or quiz in the local pub? (just putting a tin plus a little poster saying what you’re doing on the bar will get you £50).

As a team why not approach sponsors? We got £1000 from Duncan Ballantyne one year when raising money for the NSPCC.

Flog space on your jerseys to local business, or even big names, you’ve just got to ask, if they say no, move on, it’s a numbers game.

Football clubs will often provide signed kit for you to auction if you pitch it correctly.

Charities themselves ofter have loads of suggestions and can offer support and promotional material (or make some up yourselves), even if it’s arranging for you to stand by the till at B&Q with a tin (I made £120 doing this, so that’s £610 without even trying).

Good luck, I’ve done quite a lot of fundraising over the last couple of years for the NSPCC and for the local school so I know it’s daunting but it can be a lot of fun and is very satisfying.

T-S-Y

I will be up for some of those to help raise my £750. Can you send me an email.

soma_rich at yahoo.co.uk

If one of you lot want to organise a raffle. ( sorry I am a hopeless organiser)

I will put up a Troutie. Mini helmet light battery and charger. as the prize

Tis a very worthy cause

flog old kit or bike stuff on the classifieds- i raised about £70 quid towards my movember

lobby_dosser – did the same late last year and had mailed WCA earlier with that very suggestion!

Here are some other ideas I’ve been thinking of…

Climb the hieght of Everest at a local climbing wall.
Row across the atlantic on a rower at your local gym.
Swim the channel in the comfort of your local pool.

On the raffle idea… we could get donations from local bike shops maybe even STW?… and fly their flags at Mayhem and any other events we do throughout the year in the name of Team Bullheart?

I’ll be doing the Trans Provence as well if anyone wants their name on a jersey for that one?

Trout – I will email you.

There will shortly be a Trout Light Raffle organised.

Donated, pimped on Twitter and FaceBook.

I don’t hold with this “you must give / raise x” philosophy, other than to cover costs (eg, if a charity stands your entry fee to something). If you raise £100, that’s no less worthy. Nothing puts me off donating to charity faster than the charity telling me how much I have to give them, it’s just cheeky. IMHO, etc etc.

But anyway. Good luck, and please let us know how you get on.

Cougar – He hasn’t said you HAVE to raise £750, he has just suggested it as a target. Thanks for the donation and pimping

Good afternoon,

don’t hold with this “you must give / raise x” philosophy, other than to cover costs (eg, if a charity stands your entry fee to something). If you raise £100, that’s no less worthy. Nothing puts me off donating to charity faster than the charity telling me how much I have to give them, it’s just cheeky. IMHO, etc etc

Cougar, you’re right. And as WCA has suggested, my hope is that everyone racing on the team can raise a minimum of £750 for the Sarcoma Trust. That way we’ll get another £15K to a small charity that gets overlooked by large research groups because they don’t have the same financial clout as say, MacMillan or CRUK.

If we don’t manage to make the £15K through sponsorship for MM, I’ll find a way to make up the short-fall. I don’t know how as yet. But I will. Unfortunately for my other team-mates, I apply the same determination and bloody-mindedness to raising this money as I do to beating incurable cancer. What might seem unrealistic or difficult to some is the norm for me. I would love to have the comfort of being able to settle for second best or ‘try as hard as I can’ but to be frank, that means dying, and I’m not prepared to do that.

If there are Team Bullheart riders out there who want to back out of participating, PM me and let me know – there is no dishonour in doing so, and I understand that raising as much money as you can is difficult. But nothing worth having is easy.

Cougar, thanks for your donation. Its greatly appreciated.

He hasn’t said you HAVE to raise £750

Cheerfully withdrawn.

Where I was coming from, I did a run for charity a couple of years ago. Since then they occasionally send me invites, but they always say “all that we ask is that you raise at least £x00 pounds.” I’d be happy to run for them again, and raise some more money for a charity that I believe in, but this clause puts me off.

Part of it is that I can’t guarantee how much I’m going to be able to raise, and part of me just reactively thinks “you’ll get what you’re given and be thankful.” They pay for the race entry which is £20-£30 quid (and probably a lot less to them) – if I only raise £60, they’re still in credit, no? Maybe I’m just missing something obvious, but it seems to be a counter-productive way of encouraging fundraising to me.

But yeah, a personal target is a whole other bag of ferrets to the charity making demands, so ignore me. (-:

I am trying to raise the profile for everyone. If I don’t make the £750 from you lot then I am in the lucky position of making up the shortfall myself.

Like Mark, I am a determined person and am sure I will make it. I am also a gobby fella who has had past success at drumming up support and money from you lot.

Once I have made my £750 I will be reallocating the donations to someone elses name so anyone who is struggling to make the money but wants to take part gets a helping hand.

Anyone want to buy some SingleTrack back issues?

http://gallery124018.fotopic.net/c1697063.html

Take your pick and make me an offer

Really can’t see the appeal of the 911 myself.

I could hold a Sponsored Argue on here.

I’d make millions! 🙂

Elfin – you’d get more money for doing something that you didn’t enjoy!

The tax man has taken my hopes of the Porsche away for a little while.

The good news is the fabulous Mr Trout has donated a set of his amazing lights for me to raffle. Check out the Mini on here http://www.troutie.com

I am trying to work out how to run the raffle so bear with me. I reckon 100 tickets at £5 each makes it something of a bargain so perhaps £10 per ticket. What do you think?

I have emails STW towers to ask if they are okay with me promoting this on the forum because I would hate to be seen to be promoting a charity event without their consent. I will let you all know of their reply.

In the mean time, get your tenners ready for the great Trout Raffle

I reckon you’ll put people off at a tenner a ticket. I’d buy a ticket for a fiver but not for a tenner (especially as I’ve already donated once…!)

All right, Cougar calls the shots.

£5 per ticket. 100 tickets. Buy as many tickets as you want at £5 each. I will probably have a thread on here giving instructions on what to do tomorrow and will keep it updated with the number of tickets sold.

There is a chance that a couple of tickets more than the 100 will be sold if the last person buys 2 or 3 tickets when there were already 99 sold but they will be included in the raffle.

Mr Troutie rocks!!! http://www.troutie.com

That’s a good point actually, kudos to Troutie for donating the prize.

This is all about troutie and Bullheart

I see an animal connection….

…are we being taken over?

i thought we were going to get sponsor forms e-mailed to us? are we asking people to donate via the site with a name tag to show who the donation is on behalf of instead? or both? as for the raffle if it’s a fiver a ticket i’ll take two please.

Elfinsafety – Member

I could hold a Sponsored Argue on here.

I’d make millions!

Oh no you couldn’t!

Good luck to you.

I’m not clever enough to suggest a topic for an argument between Elfin and TJ. I would be happy to sponsor one, depending on the number of cogent and appropriate posts achieved. Anyone else up for it? 🙂

Shoot, I am discourteous in not asking either of them to willingly participate! 🙁

Argument TJ not contradiction…

Sandwich – Oh yes it is

I’m doing the 24 hr 3 peaks (hopefully)

If you’re talking about Ben Nevis, Scafell and Snowdon – don’t bother, just give the money you save on fuel etc to the charity. That event is actively discouraged, not least by mountain rescue.

Donation made, if we ever meet I want a go of your 911 😀