Well, with less than a week to go before I fly to Israel and just ten days before the race itself, I'm very stoked to say that we - The Birdwatch-Birdguides Roadrunners - have passed our £3000 fundraising target. It's genuinely humbling to scroll down the donations on the Just Giving page and recognise so many friends and family, dozens of whom have coughed up for the cause (and that's not including those who did so anonymously - I know at least some who have....). I know some fine people, really.
Meeting the target doesn't mean stepping off the pedal though. Far from it - £3000 was a lofty figure, but an essentially arbitrary number and one that, as it grows, translates directly into more and more funding for the brilliant, on-the-ground work of Doğa Derneği (Birdlife Turkey), who will use every penny to help stop the slaughtering, shooting, trapping and killing of many millions of birds that migrate every year via the eastern Mediterranean flyway. You can find out more about their work here - and I'd heartily recommend reading my good friend, Israeli birding ace and Champions of the Flyway pioneer Yoav Perlman's wonderful blog post about it here - but in short, if you've a love of the natural world, migration and all its breathtaking, esoteric glories, then it's a cause that fits your profile.
I'll be blogging, facebooking and live tweeting during the lead up to the race, the race itself and during the aftermath - via this channel, via my Facebook page and via my Twitter feed -
and I'll be using #COTFRoadrunners throughout, so please do follow our journey and find out why your money is so valued and essential for an extremely worthy cause.
If you haven't given yet, everything counts and donating takes literally seconds:
