This time last year I was in training ready for a 50km cycle ride from Grantham to Nottingham dressed as Robin Hood. Not something you do everyday but I was part of the award winning Team Honk bloggers for a baton relay all in aid of Comic Relief.
My fellow Nottingham blogger team mates, friends and I endured nine punctures in ice cold wind and rain and were truly exhausted at the end of the day. It took us eight hours in all to complete something which we thought we would have had wrapped up in half the time! We were even too exhausted to eat cake at the end of the day and it took a good few days to recover. I remember the very next day I just wanted to cry – I experienced this massive low and was sooo tired I could barely move. Sounds ridiculous for a 50km ride doesn’t it, but it was like nothing I’ve experienced before. We were on and off the bike riding canal paths that seemed intent on piercing our times every few hundred metres and once we were cold and wet it was so hard to warm up again. But, it was amazing fun – I can say that in retrospect – and the camaraderie was so brilliant that I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. And we were raised an incredible amount of money for some fantastic causes in the UK. I can honestly say being part of Team Honk was one of the highlights of 2014 for me.
The Team Honk family is a band of bloggers, friends and family all passionate about raising funds for Comic Relief. Last year we raised a whopping £31,000 smashing the £20,000 target. This year were hoping to do even better!
So for Red Nose Day 2015, I’m joining Team Honk again, only this time I’ll be donning leg warmers and strutting my stuff with hundreds of other Team Honk bloggers and their friends and families and the likes of Davina McCall for Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day Danceathon! Whoop! I can’t wait!
I am ready to dance! For SIX WHOLE HOURS!
Yes, for six hours on 8 March I’ll be strutting my stuff in Wembley Stadium! I promise you it will be a sight to behold! I’ll be doing numerous different dance styles including…wait for it….50’s jive (help!), West End musical theatre dance (I can’t do a single high kick), rock ‘n roll (apparently!) and 80’s anthems (altogether now: *sings* “Ski, ski, spray, spray, comb your hair, comb your hair and Superman!” Not sure that is an anthem but hey-ho!). I’ll be staying alive to 70’s disco, throwing some shapes to street dance, cha-cha-ing for the Latin section, busting some moves for Hip Hop and hoping I’m still standing and in one piece for Bollywood!!
The dance style and the teacher will be changing every 30 minutes with shimmying stars taking to the stage to keep all our spirits high, our dance feet moving and the pounds pouring in for Red Nose Day.
Claudia Winkleman will present and she will be joined by a host of stars and the UK’s dance glitterati, including some familiar faces from the dance world; Arlene Phillips, Chelsee Healey, Rachel Riley, Rufus Hound and Zoe Ball, BBC Radio 2’s Jo Whiley and Got to Dance’s Adam Garcia and Kimberly Wyatt, and there’ll be more great names announced over the coming weeks. How fantastic does it sound!!! But….
Help!!
OK, so the training is only just beginning and I need your help! I need to raise £150. Your support would go a long way to keeping me dancing for a whole six hours on the day, but it will go even further in changing the lives of the children and families that will benefit from your kindness and the support of Comic Relief. To give you an idea: £150 will fund a bereavement helpline for children and families for ten months.
If you’re a company and you’d like to sponsor me for the #RedNoseDaydanceathon, I would be so very grateful! I will happily wear a t-shirt with your name across it and shout from the highest hill tops to the 2,500 other people there about how fabulously supportive you have been. I’ll wear your dance tights, your leg warmers, your tutus, headbands, wrist warmers! You name it! Please contact me if you’d like some more info.
I also have a sponsorship page here and I’d love your support. You really will be helping to change the lives of families here in the UK and in Africa.
Fancy joining in? Of course you do! Sign up and join Team Honk for Red Nose Day.
#RNDdanceathon #TeamHonkDanceathon
@Team_Honk
@rednoseday