Two Ladies, one kayak and 125 miles!

The Channeling Positivity Foundation is hopefully is on its way to being a fully fledged and official foundation. Hooray! And of course the fundraising efforts still continue; Claire and Liz have bravely taken on the next challenge to help raise the profile of Channeling Positivity and raise some much needed funds to help us to "inspire young people to lead positive lives". Hopefully over the next few months we will have an official and rather swanky looking web site and of course Claire and Liz's blog about their mamouth kayak race of 125 miles......ouch!!!! So stay in touch and I hand you over to Mrs Claire Kay......................

Last year I watched Justine and Kate plough through their long, gruelling and at times ridiculous training regime to prepare for their amazing channel swim. I followed, supported and help them in their fund raising efforts. One morning walking home with Justine from the school drop off, she had been talking me through the training for the week and recounting how much weed she and Kate had washed out of their cozzies after swimming in the Trent. As normal I laughed a lot and told her she was mad. Then she asked me if there was any sporting challenge I had ever wanted to do. Not me, I do that sort of thing, but I recounted a gruelling kayaking challenge that some friends had undertaken the year before, the Devizes to Westminster kayak race - 125 miles, "well" she said, "you should do it." Despite my protests she left me saying "you should Claire, why not?." "Perhaps I will" was my response.

Perhaps I will - what was thinking! To Justine my armour had cracked, I had signed my contract, she had her next challenge for Channelling Positivity, whether I liked it or not! That was in June last year so what have I been doing? Kayaking, running, oh yes and a bit more kayaking!

I plied my friend Liz with wine one evening and she agreed to join me in a K2. In August we thought we should probably learn to kayak, good idea if we intended to do that for 125 miles! We had both done a bit of paddling with our kids at Nottingham Kayak Club but I think we definitely wore the label, novice!

Now it is March and we are 5 weeks away from our challenge. Unfortunately as the Channelling Positivity Foundation is not yet off the ground we have been unable to fund raise for the Foundation, but are fund raising for the Teenage Cancer Trust and hoping that in the last five weeks we can raise the profile of Channelling Positivity and see if we can help find a benefactor or two to get this charity off the ground.

The inspiration of watching others succeed is very powerful. Experiencing success for yourself can be life changing.

Our challenge may not be as intense as Justine and Kate's channel swim, but for Liz and I it has already pushed us further physically and mentally than we ever expected. We are not as fit or as dedicated to our training as the girls were, and we started from a lower base but we still intend to achieve our goal as "anything is possible if you have courage", so Justine tells me!

Over the next 5 weeks we will keep you up to date with how we are dealing with our preparations. If we can help inspire others to give a challenge a go, we can show that the fundamental aspiration of the Channeling Positivity Foundation is sound and worth supporting.