Abingdonian 2020

59 www.abingdon.org.uk Summer Term 2M Back to School Challenge On the weekend of 20/21 June, 2M participated in a charity challenge to support Cancer Research UK. In the weeks previously, our tutor, Mrs McRae, and all of us had planned the event: what the challenge was, what charity to raise money for and when and how we would complete it. The only things left to do were to train and gather sponsorship money. When it came to the two days in June, with pictures taken and a final briefing on Zoom the night before, we set off with the aim of travelling the combined distance from all of our homes to school on transport powered purely by us. This added up to an overall distance of 719 miles, meaning that we each had to travel an average of 31.3 miles over the weekend. I personally travelled on my road bike, which I had been using almost daily over the lockdown period as my exercise. Other members of the tutor group came up with a number of creative ways of getting around, including walking, running, riding on a cycle trainer in the comfort of their own home, open water swimming and even unicycling! All of these added to the fun and spirit of the weekend. When organising the event, some people linked some parts of their routes with other people who lived near to them to meet up during the challenge (while social distancing of course!). Others also included the school in their routes which was fitting for what we were doing. At the end of the first day, all of the boys in 2M, along with family and friends who had joined us, logged our distances on Google Sheets to see how far we had to go on the next day. The distance achieved so far by the boys in 2M was 534.4 miles and the distance traveled by our friends and family was an additional 688 miles. At 7pm that evening, we had another quick Zoom meeting with our tutor to discuss the highlights of the day and decide on the plan for the next day. The average needed for the second day was 8 miles each, so, for many, there was a lot less pressure on raking in the mileage. We managed to go well beyond, achieving almost 40 miles over the target. With the friends and family distance added on, we managed to go 1,696 miles, meaning that we could probably have taken a whole other tutor group to school and back. The giving page was hugely successful and, a few days the challenge, we had raised well above our target of £2,500. Our overall total including Gift Aid was £3,703.25. We all really enjoyed completing the challenge and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without our tutor Mrs McRae. She came up with the idea of 2M doing a sponsored challenge every two years and has raised thousands of pounds for charity as a result. Lachlan Keene, 2SCVM