Well the event is over, at last! (You will all understand what I mean about this shortly).
Dear Friends, Well the event is over, at last! (You will all understand what I mean about this shortly). On the day, we had a great turn out of people, and some I saw were representing their lost ones by wearing a yellow ribbon. My son, Jacob completed what he set out to do (the goal) of 15km. He completed this in 2 hours .45 minutes), with some strong determination that only came from him. Not bad for a 10 year old! Afterwards, Jacob told me that he found the walk/run hard but at the same time he would like to participate again next year. Regarding myself, well I have to admit, I found this hard. Unfortunately I had to retire around 40 km mark (after 8 hours. 32 minutes) after sustaining some injuries with both my knee caps being inflamed and then tearing my calf muscle (recommendation that came from St. Johns and the physio at the event). I’m glad I took their advice. I was happy with my result. The next 10 km was left up to my other team mate, Paul Kennedy. The weather changed from being sunny, to then, wet, wet, wet and it rained and poured down. The temperature dropped dramatically from Sunny, to overcast, then became very cold (got down to around 6 to 8 degrees), the terrain went from beautiful to muddy (I mean MUDDY). Paul, fought through these trichinous conditions and completed a whole 50km in 10 hours & 50 minutes. An awesome effort! I was encouraged to see that there were 6 people that drove down from the central coast & a couple from my church to do the this event. An amazingly courageous woman (Mrs Ellen Modra) who had just had a knee reconstruction completed the 50km in 11 hours & 27 minutes. Ellen was doing this event, after her young daughter Hannah at the age of 17 years old committed suicide. This alone was an achievement for her personally and her family. On the walk, I met one young man called David (22 years old) that drove 795km from Canberra on the Friday, that took over 8 hours to drive, just to do this event on the Saturday. That’s commitment! I personally want to thank everybody that has supported both Jacob and myself for this event and for supporting Focus on the family Australia to expand our work in this area. Our own team raised just over $8200.00. In total we had just over 400 participants. Focus on the Family Australia is close to reaching its target of $100,000.00. Without all your help on this, Focus on the family would have not been able to achieve this amount. Thank you all, so much for generous donations. The funds will be used to assist Focus on the Family Australia, as we work with Schools, Churches, Community and Sporting Groups all over our nation to bring hope to young people and their families – ultimately to save lives. This will be done through our New prevention program called Born Survivors. Please note, that we have extended our donation period to the 30th June So donations, can still be made by visiting: www.GoTheExtraMile.com.au/vic/donate.asp Just select the Mighty Focus Walkers (under the Teams section) All donations over $2.00 are tax deductible Thank you once again, for supporting Focus on the Family Australia expand our work in this area. Kind Regards, Gus Villablanca Focus on the family Australia