What a weekend!

Did you know it's costs £33,000 to keep the Child Line running for just one day!? More on this later...

Today marks the 7 week countdown before I start running the length of Britain solo for the NSPCC. But the last 2 days have been crazy...My (parents) house and surrounding roads was turned into 'mini-hollywood'! I was chosen by the NSPCC as 1 of 5 unique DIY fundraisers to be filmed for a feature video, by Reel Nice film production company, which the NSPCC are hoping to release around May, so keep an eye out. It really was a great experience and the NSPCC and Reel Nice team were a pleasure to work with. Here is a condensed version of what happened...

Day 1

I was expecting two people at most for the shoot, but come Saturday morning there were five people with a van full of professional filming equipment – plus a photographer! Now I definitely regretted not getting that haircut… 🤦‍♂️ Various scenes were shot of me running around my local streets, and of course the classic tying of my shoelaces shot was taken to prove that not only am I ready to start my big run in April... but I’m also capable of tying shoelaces. 'Go me', I joke; it comes out really good though (sneak preview of my shoelace technique below). Luckily the docile morning fog fluttered away as we began the filming, and the sun started to beam down. This gave us some truly great lighting for filming (as I was told by the team, and from the clip I saw, I can confirm). It was weird for me to be following behind or by the side of a van with men hanging out with their cameras so they could get footage of me running...but I think the locals were even more taken aback by what was happening. Epsom does not often see this sort of action, especially early on a Saturday morning, bar the famous Derby race, that is. 

After filming a few different scenes and posing for the camera a few times, it was time to go to the Nuts Challenge obstacle course. The idea behind this is to show people my adventurous side and that I’m up for any challenge. Seeing as the course has been voted the toughest in the UK for 2018, it was perfect for it. It’s also where Jon Albion trains a lot, and I was told he was found half-naked in a hut with signs of hypothermia after trying to do as many 7km laps as possible… That certainly didn’t instill us with confidence considering Jon is the best Obstacle Course Racer and a world-class Skyrunner! Accompanied with me were my brother who is planning to run a day with me plus a few friends who were dying to get their five seconds of fame (I kid, they love this sorta thing, and did me a massive favour, so thanks). Having never done anything quite like it, I was a little bit nervous of looking like I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but I think my brother had that covered after seeing him tackle the 1st obstacle… The first 2 obstacles were a good warm up for the last one – ‘The Tank’. Single lane ropes hung over a freezing cold mud-pool and somehow you had to pull your body over on top of the rope. I was told to fall in, which I excelled in after less than 10 seconds of trying. Am I ready for Hollywood yet? Being wet and shocked by how cold the water was I made sure to be a good sport and got everyone else to join me by waving their rope around... Next we did it with a GoPro attached to my head, and we all went extremely quiet as we concentrated intensely. This was it. We had all done it!!! I made sure we got some high 5's in for the footage. It wasn't until Mark the director came over asking if I had gone in again, as per the script 🤦‍♂️... round 3 it was! After another successful splash I then had a couple of solo attempts where I had to go back in twice - lucky me. 

Day 2

This was the interview stage of the filming. I even roped in both sets of my grandparents as they will be supporting me during my run and the film crew were keen to get their take on it all. It was again very weird to have all this film equipment around and some of us even got mics attached to our chests! It was also surreal to see bright lights shining on my grandparents as they answered questions about me. We all got interviewed separately (I hope they said nice things about me...) as well as shots of us going over planning the logistics of the big run to tie in the filming from yesterday. There was even time to film a couple more outdoor shots, and by the time it had all finished I was just getting warmed up to the idea of being on camera all the time! During my interview, I let slip an alter ego I have - J. Killa that only my local friends know about. The reason why this came up will be revealed in the video (or not if it gets cut...). 

Grandparents hopefully speaking kind words about me...

It'll be really interesting to see what clips are actually used since the video is going to be short (less than 2 minutes I believe) and they shot quite a few hours... Hopefully it'll be out around the time I finish my run (11th May) which would be great for my fundraising effort. As I mentioned at the start, it costs £33,000 a day to run the Child Line. £33,000. A day. My target I've set is only £5,000 - not even enough to run the Child Line for 4 hours. Let's hope I can smash my target - every little helps and you can donate here: https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Team/JOGLErunchallenge Many thanks for reading!!! Just 7 weeks to go.