Henry & Willow run for a new NCCFC clubhouse!

Thank you so much for your interest in supporting Willow and I!

This 10k run is to raise funds for a new clubhouse and changing room facilities for NCCFC for our home pitches in Llanishen Park.

If you want to support grassroots girls football, support Willow before her 13th birthday on 12th May and/or support me (belatedly, for my birthday on 3rd May), £5 is all it takes! 60 people giving us just that will get us there :)

The story is this: Willow's beloved football club, North Cardiff Cosmos FC, are fundraising to develop their clubhouse and changing room facilities at our home ground in Llanishen Park, Cardiff. It's already halfway there and looking great but needs a final push to then provide what will be decades of exceptional service to the local community - cafe, pool table, outside seating, dog friendly etc - for kids and adult football teams of all ages and their supporters from all around Cardiff.

I'm running this, my first 10k, on May 11th to help the awesome volunteer decorators, paid contractors and coaches at NCCFC make this vision of this brilliant, new, local facility a reality.

I only recently ran my first ever 5k and I must say I absolutely hated it...!

I have got a little bit more practice in since then, and have started enjoying parts of it a tiny bit more (but not much!) and I am genuinely intimidated by the idea of running for what will inevitably be over an hour and possibly in some more of this recent bright and hot sunshine...

Willow was totally committed to running it with me also but very sadly (for both of us!) she needs to be over 15 before she is allowed to run 10k and will have to settle for just 2k, so I have lost her as my treasured running partner! I won't have her either as my excuse for stopping (if I need/want to), or running very slowly by comparison to the rest of the field who all look EXTREMELY serious from photo evidence of last year's Bryn Meadows Caerphilly 10k, check it out: https://www.caerphilly10k.co.uk/en/

Scary, right?

Willow will instead run the 2k an hour before me (in about 9 mins flat probably!) and then will be relegated to the role of cheering on her puffing dad as he fights his demons all the way around the main course.

Many people, probably including you, I know have run MUCH further than this, admittedly, (and many times probably too) but nonetheless, for me, it definitely represents a personal ordeal...

In any case the point is not really to encourage me to complete this run but to help NCCFC raise funds to further develop and expand the provision of grassroots girls football here in Cardiff.

I will be so grateful to all of you who donate to support me on my way round (and round...) Caerphilly's castle and surrounding hillsides and help us get this clubhouse finished in the process.

Thanks in advance for being with me in this way and donating to a cause that is close to mine and Willow's hearts - girls football! Let's do this!!