Marathon effort for mothers and sick children

Marathon effort for mothers and sick children
By Robin Marshall

Greg Dorey, the British Ambassador to Hungary, launched a major new fund-raising appeal, with an initial target of €50,000, at the 13th annual Budapest Burns Supper on Saturday 30 January 2010.

The plan is to raise funds to expand the number of mother and child distance trauma suites at the Second Department of Paediatrics at Budapest’s Semmelweis University Hospital, better known as SOTE II.

The rooms will allow the mothers of critically ill children coming in from the Hungarian countryside (and possibly, under certain circumstances, from outside the country’s borders) to stay with their offspring, an important aid to recovery. SOTE II has very few such facilities at present.

Tackling the fund-raising drive are Simon Saunders and Harry Harron, who will take part in April 2010 in what is known as the toughest foot race on earth: the Marathon des Sables (MdS). The two men are the only Hungary-based entrants from an international field of 750, and the first for five years.

The challenge covers 250km (155 miles), which equates to about five-and-a-half marathons, and is run across the Sahara Desert over six days. Competitors have to carry with them food, clothes, medical kit, sleeping bag, in fact everything they will need for the duration, apart from water and a tent. (Water is rationed and handed out at each checkpoint.)

Harron and Saunders will have to prepare all their own food throughout the race, and will need a minimum of 2,000 calories per day. Mid-day temperatures can get as high as 49°C (about 120°F), much of the day is spent running or hiking across uneven, rocky ground, and up to 20% of the total distance actually involves traversing sand dunes.

Physical fitness is important, of course, but only a fool would underestimate the mental stress that the team will need to endure. “Even though we have run many 42km (26 mile) marathons and mountain marathons between us, this does not mean that we will find the MdS easy – we are doing lots of training,” Harron and Saunders say on their blog (http://harryandsimon.wordpress.com/).

Saunders is the elder of the two-man team at 38. Now a personal trainer, he is a former cross-country athlete who has represented the UK. Harron, a pharmacist and entrepreneur, is 37. He has plenty of running experience of his own, and has already traversed 500km (310 miles) of this desert using wind power in the form of a kite and an adapted buggy.

The pair is now looking for people to sponsor its endeavours, and help it reach its fund-raising target. Company contributions to the costs of the specialist kit Harron and Saunders will need, or with their training programme, would be appreciated too. The City Home Lifestyle Complex in Ó utca is doing just that, having agreed to let the men use its PURE wellness centre and spa (including a 17m pool) in preparation for the MdS.

Directing the appeal and making sure the funds raised will be able to do the most good is the Robert Burns International Foundation, which distributes money raised by the annual Budapest Burns Supper, among other sources. Chairing the fund raising appeal will be Patrick McMenamin, who runs popular Budapest Scottish bar and restaurant The Caledonia, and who is also a member of the organising committee for the Burns Supper.

Harron and Saunders can be contacted via their blog, and Simon can be reached via email, mobile phone (+36 30 526-3177) or Skype (simonteammypt).

McMenamin can be contact via email.

The annual Budapest Burns Supper, an evening in celebration of Robert Burns, Sctolands's national poet, will be held at the Corinthia Grand Hotel Royal, starting at 6:30pm.

Press release prepared for the Robert Burns International Foundation (www.rbif.org) by Robin Marshall, Devil's Advocate Communications.

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