Ann Bodkin - Team St John running the FLORA London Marathon 2008

Every year since I was a child I have watched the London Marathon and wanted to be part of such a special event.  In more recent years I have been to watch friends run in the London Marathon and seen the exhausted pride on their faces at the end, and this brought home to me what an amazing achievement it would be to run the London Marathon.

Why St John?

There are so many charities to choose from in terms of deciding who you would like to run for; they are all such worthy causes it is so hard to decide.  I decided, therefore, to run for a charity with which I had a family connection. 

My mum has been a volunteer for St John Ambulance since I was a small child and has now been with them for 25 years. Due to the shortage of volunteers, the time commitment to attending sports, arts and music events is great and means that volunteers, like my mum, often have to re-arrange their other plans to ensure that the correct number of volunteers can attend. 

My mum, who now has severe diabetes, undertakes about 14 hours in an average month on event attendance (higher in the summer, with county shows (more than double this) and also higher around Christmas as there are more events on then).  Volunteers don't just give up their time to attend sports, arts and music events; they have to train at least once a week (a minimum of 2 hours a week) and sit examinations at regular intervals.

I am extremely proud of all that my mum, and her fellow volunteers, do and I wanted to support this level of personal commitment.  

In the community

In the UK sports, arts and music events cannot be held without qualified first aiders on the premises.  This means that many of the events which I (and you) enjoy attending could not happen without the attendance of St John Ambulance – including the London Marathon itself. 

In particular, this makes the St John Ambulance units a key part of their local community, as village fetes and county shows, local amateur dramatic performances and regional theatres, and outdoor concerts at local places of interest all require their attendance and these organisations cannot afford to employ permanent first aid staff to fulfil the legal requirements themselves.

St John Ambulance volunteers are a presence at so many events that I do not believe that people are really aware that they are not part of the NHS. That they are not government funded.  I hope that by running for St John Ambulance I have helped to raise awareness of the need for donations to keep the charity going, and also to make people more aware of the hard work and commitment of St John Ambulance volunteers.

Fundraising and training

My fundraising for the London Marathon has gone very well.  I am very lucky to have such generous friends, colleagues and clients.  I exceeded my target of £2000 at Christmas, and now hope to raise around £3500 in total.  My company does not have a charity policy and so I have been reliant on donations – with no 'corporate matching'. 

Undertaking a marathon was never going to be easy – I am asthmatic and have arthritis in my knees.  Additionally, I have an extremely demanding job which leaves me with little free time. Luckily my friends and family have been very understanding about not seeing much of me whilst I try to fit training in.  My partner has also been extremely supportive – mixing my supplements before my runs and having meals and baths ready at the end of them. 

Training, and undertaking the marathon itself, has been further hampered by illness over the last couple of weeks, which is unfortunately going to mean that I will not be able to run as much of the distance as I had hoped.  When I entered the London Marathon, my aim was to just get round.  As my training progressed I was on course for being able to run the whole route but, due to illness, I have had to re-adjust my expectation back to 'just get round'.  Whilst this has clearly left me feeling disappointed, at the end of the day I entered the London Marathon in order to participate in an amazing experience and nothing will change the feeling of being part of that on the day – it is more important for me to be able to participate and finish than to worry about how much I ran, or how long it took to get round.

Team St John

The team and St John Ambulance have been great in terms of assisting with preparation for the race.  The forum is useful because it enables you to hear from others about their experiences and, as a first-timer, to understand better how it will all actually work on the day. 

The introductory day session which St John ran was excellent – again it assisted in understanding how everything will go on the day but, more importantly, it reminded me why I was running for St John and renewed my sense of pride in being associated with an organisation steeped in such history and which achieves so much with so little resource.  This gave me renewed vigour going back to my training.