South Tyneside man enlists the help of nation's sporting heroes to help boost NHS fundraiser

Graeme Foreman, a sporting performance psychologist and mentor, says that, although he “hates running”, he committed this year to a fundraising effort for healthcare services in the North East.

He raised around £2,500 for the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle earlier this year, having run 365 miles – 153 of them in his own back garden – as part of the charity drive.

Mr Foreman explained that his young daughter had been diagnosed with diaphragmatic agenesis several years ago – meaning she had no diaphragm on her left-hand side.

"My daughter was only given a slim chance of living when she got the diagnosis,” he told The Gazette.

"So, once the fog settled after a few years, I felt it was time to give something back - which is why I set out to run the 365 miles.

"What I didn’t bank on was a global pandemic hitting and me being restricted to my back garden for most of the year.

“In total, the effort worked out as twenty-two thousand and something shuttles in my back garden.”

Mr Foreman says that, after having completed the initial fundraising round, he had the idea to expand the initiative through a new personal challenge for participants to run 100 miles (lockdown restrictions notwithstanding) before year’s end – with the proceeds generated from this more ambitious second fundraising project going towards North East food banks.

Making use of the contacts Mr Foreman had made over decades of work as a sports psychologist, he was able to persuade top-flight sports stars – including Sheffield United midfielder Chris Basham and former Olympic marathon runner Aly Dixson – to take part in a second ‘virtual marathon’ which ended up involving participants across the world.

The South Shields man added: “When we’d raised the money for the RVI, I was sitting out having a virtual beer one Friday afternoon wondering what else we could do, as we were about to head back into lockdown and I was shielding.

"We decided to do something a bit more ambitious as well as something that would help us get through the second national lockdown.

"So we sent out a few emails and managed to rope 63 people in – 11 teams, in three different countries. And each team captain would send along the number of miles they had completed that day.

"The total amount raised second time around was £9,000, which is amazing. As there were groups abroad taking part, some of the money they raised also went towards charitable projects there as well.

"For example, one of the teams in Spain split their money between a food bank charity in Newcastle and one in their own country.

"It was really great to have all those guys who took part on board. They all jumped on a Zoom call this month where we let them know how much we’d raised – it was really great to give everybody involved a bit of motivation during the Christmas period.”

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