Phil Hayward, Danny Fishwick, Mathew Pearson and lifelong Wolves fan Dave Taylor are running 10km every day in December, in a bid to raise £10,000 for Cure Leukaemia.
Inspired by Carl Ikeme’s battle with the illness, the trio are continuing the good work of Rotherham United’s medical team, who ran 10k every day during November for Prostate Cancer.
Six days into the challenge, more than £1,000 has already been amassed, with donations welcome online here.
On the challenge, Hayward, Wolves’ head of medical, said: “We were inspired by the guys at Rotherham running 10k every day throughout November. We thought: ‘Why don’t we do the same thing throughout December for Cure Leukaemia?’ We’re all fairly keen runners anyway, not to a high level, but we do keep fairly fit.
“It’s a challenge for us because of the schedule, we’ve got a lot of matches coming up, and we’ve got training and family commitments to fit in, especially around Christmas time. So, it’s definitely going to be tough from a schedule perspective, let alone the physical challenge so in addition to our efforts, we must also say a big thanks to wives and girlfriends who are instrumental supporting the cause. “
“We’re running separately when we can fit it in, because of GPS, we can track our distance, upload it to social media and everyone can monitor progress. We’re at different levels, but we’ve looked at our best possible times and added a bit on to give a daily target but to be honest. we’re really pushing ourselves, it’s no jog in the park!
“It’s difficult, but we’re really keen to make sure we succeed. If anyone gets an injury it won’t be a case of not doing it, it’ll be a case of walking or being pushed round to make sure we don’t fail! We’ll definitely complete it.”
Cure Leukaemia helps blood cancer patients to access pioneering drug and transplant treatments by funding a network of specialist research nurses across the UK.
“The big aim is to raise as much money as we can for Cure Leukemia, which is a charity dear to our hearts here at Wolves because of Carl Ikeme’s close association with them,” Hayward said.
“We think it’s a really worthy cause because of all the great work they do in the local area with people of all ages suffering with this condition. They do a lot of great work with current sufferers of leukemia, but also in terms of prevention and research to try and understand the causes of it and try to work out ways to better combat the disease.
“We’re hoping to raise £10,000 – a fairly lofty target but we wanted to aim high! It’s also a punchy strapline, 10k for 10k. £10,000 for 10km every day throughout December.”
Wolves supporters can show their supporter by donating on the Just Giving page here.
In addition to the conventional ways of sponsoring, the players have donated various items that they have signed to raise further funds – we’ll be auctioning these and running raffles throughout the month so please follow the medical team on @WolvesSportMed on twitter for more details of this.
