Woman dies running marathon, raises (so far) £500,000

I don't know if this is simply a tragedy, or is heart warming, or both, or tells something about what people are like.

She collapsed and died of unknown causes a mile or so from the end. At the time of the race she had raised £400, just short of the target she set herself.

I just checked the justgiving.com page for her, and now there are approx 47,000 donations totaling approx £530,000

I donated £5. I dont know why. It wont make any difference to the girl who is now dead, and the charity if no more or less deserving than it was before... but I and many others did anyway.

 

We were talking about this at work, and I also had the same concern over whether it was sad, tragic, blackly comic, or just one of them things.

I find it interesting that a death drives donations, but in the scale of human loss, this could well result in many people receiving help and not topping themselves, so I guess it's a good thing.

It did depress me a bit, but I can't think of anyone I could call to talk about it...

 

Heck. Poor woman, and poor surviving family

A dear friend of mine's daughter was running it. I had no idea of the danger.

 

26 miles seems dangerous to me. I can't run one short block.

 

today:


£700,302.51 raised
61,194 donations

_

And yeah, the guy that ran from Marathon to Athens was supposed to have dropped dead after he delivered the message, so that isn't the best basis to make up a race distance (plus it wasnt even quite 26 miles, they apparently added a mile for the route of the 1908 Olympics and that became the settled distance)

The more I thought about this, the more I think that the main positive you can take (other than it being a relatively worthwhile charity) is that this must be a tremendous comfort to her family that survive her, to see something good coming from something terrible.

If the person that died was not a young and attractive woman, but a 30 year old guy (and people do die running marathons sometimes) obviously the response would be different. I for one doubt I would have given my £5. I dont like giving to charities because of a bad experience previously and I have only done so in my life 3 times in the past

Once for this, once for a Sports Relief thing for a girl TV presenter who rowed single handed down the Amazon (that seemed a pretty impressive thing to do) and once after the Boxing Day tidal wave. Otherwise I'll sponsor close mates when they do stuff, when they do something at work I'll put a quid in the charity box cos its easier than arguing about the whole culture of guilt tripping people and wasting/misusing funds I see in most charities.... but not much else.

 

The money is going to a good cause. It's a lot better than if she had died and that was the end of the story.

 

up to a million now

• Total raised£871,656.18
• Gift Aid£187,632.53