‘Jo Jo Row Your Boat’ aim for London2Cambridge

Rowena Haslett Fossey and Jo Sharman are Fertility Nurse Specialists at our Cambridge Clinic. They are taking part in the London2Cambridge Challenge on 2nd July 2016, to raise money for two charities that are close to their hearts.

Their official team name is ‘Jo Jo Row your boat’ and comprises of Jo, Rowena, Rowena’s sister Annika Symonds and their friends Sarah Poynter and Wendy Collings.

Here is their first blog as they prepare for this gruelling walk:

We have decided to walk 100km from London to Cambridge as part of the Ultra Challenge. We will set out from the Olympic Park at 7am on Saturday 2^ndJuly and hopefully finish in Cambridge on the morning of Sunday 3^rd July. We will only stop at 25km, 50km and 75km to eat – there will be no sleeping!

Jo and I have decided to undertake this challenge for a number of reasons. The main reason is in memory of our wonderful mothers who both died prematurely. Jo is walking for Pancreatic Cancer UK and I am walking for Arthritis UK. Both these charities mean a great deal to us and we hope to raise as much money as we can to help support these charities.

We have entered officially as team ‘Jo Jo Row your boat’. ‘Jo Jo’ is Jo’s nickname and for most of Rowena’s childhood friends used to sing ‘Row Row Row your boat’ to her for obvious reasons! We set up the team and then recruited our other members. We wanted a team name that was catchy but linked to us.

Over the coming months we will train hard in preparation for the challenge. This will involve long organised hikes, night walks and basically walking at every given opportunity! We can often be seen marching round the grounds of Bourn Hall, although this will be easier in drier weather as we currently require wellies and sometimes I think we’d be better off in waders! My poor dog has never had so many walks.

We have completed one training walk so far. This was on Sunday 10^th January. Starting at Blackfriars Bridge in London, we went along the river to the O2. There we crossed the river by cable car and walked back to Blackfriars. We walked 27km in 4hours and 23 minutes.

We were blessed with bright dry weather, and thanks to the speed that Jo made me walk at the cold did not bother us much! The training walk really showed us how much we will need to do to complete the 100km challenge; after just 27km we were aware of muscles we didn’t know we had. I strangely had a pain in my right forearm…my husband says this is down to taking too many selfies!

We will keep you posted on how are training is going and if you would like to support us please use the links below:

www.justgiving.com/Rowena-Haslett-Fossey?utm_id=5

www.justgiving.com/JO-Sharman1

Bye for now,
Row and Jo