After a long day being dragged around the shops by my wife and kids whilst on Christmas leave I settled down to watch Noel Edmonds Christmas Presents show. All the way through the programme I noticed one good cause after another receiving well deserved surprises and gifts, the programme was close to the end and came to its last 10 minutes, it's then I saw ( to me ) the most well deserved cause of all - The Forces Children's Trust. After seeing the great job the charity does and being a serving soldier in the British Army and also having lost friends on operational duty who had kids and seeing the heartache and pain the loss of a father causes I felt I had no choice than to try and help this cause as much as I could, so I sat down and thought of a plan to put to my troop when they returned from leave to raise money.

First day back to work

After receiving my first brew from one of my lads I told him to get all the rest of the guys in the office for a chat, I informed them of the programme that I had seen the week before and told them that I had a plan to raise money for this cause, straight away all 4 of them volunteered to take part and from that moment on training and organising began.

All the water you can drink

After informing the guys that the challenge would consist of a 24 hr row ( on a gym rowing machine) I knew I would have to hold the event at a venue where I could raise as much money as possible, after a quick think I decided that the large 24 hour ASDA store nearby would be the best location, I quickly got in contact with them and arranged a visit to talk about what we had planned, as soon as I started telling the events manager about the reason behind us wanting to raise money for the Forces Children's Trust they could not have been anymore helpful if they tried,  we were offered the best location in the store to maximise our opportunity in raising money, if that wasn't enough, they then informed us that for the whole 24 hrs they would supply us with all the food and water we could drink.

"Can't we just do a sponsored sleep Sarg"?

As soon as all agreed to the task no more than an hour later all were in the gym working hard and burning the extra food off, we all had taken on over Christmas.  After the first week, of 2 hours a day, every day, training hard and already hating the site of the rowing machine some of the guys with a grin on their faces said "wouldn't it be easier to do a sponsored sleep sarg?" I informed them that if they preferred to do a 24 hrs run instead it could be arranged; they quickly and happily went back to the idea of the rowing machine.

Moral is high and everyone is training hard and looking forward to the event day, I have total confidence that everyone in the team willl complete the task ahead, I have already heard the guys coming up with their own ideas for maybe another event for the Forces Children's Trust later on in the year, so watch this space.