Nick Walker, a Governor of Ardingly College www.ardingly.com, staged two fantastic feats to raise money for the Woodard Langalanga Secondary School www.woodard.co.uk/woodard-langalanga-secondary-school/ in Gilgil, Kenya. The Ruitor Challenge and Foglietta Challenge, in 2012 and 2013, contributed a little more than €150,000 so that the Kariandusi School Trust www.kariandusi.co.uk could complete the project.
Nick has now set himself a new fundraiser, The Kenya Ironman Challenge www.kenyanironman.com, to raise money for Kariandusi’s latest project; two nursery schools, (one of which is directly next to the Woodard school), to allow the quite large number of children having to stay at home, to look after their baby brother or sister, to go to school too. Each nursery school will cost about £10,000 and they will provide pre-school education for 160 children every year for many years to come.
In this next Challenge, Nick will try to complete an Ironman 70.3 triathlon (consecutive swim, bike, run) but to do it as a poor Kenyan would have to do it, with very little indeed by way of material advantages or any of the normal “luxuries” of modern day endurance events. The challenge comprises:
- A circa 2km open water swim with no wetsuit or goggles, in the dirty, cold, December waters of London’s Serpentine Lake.
- A 90km bicycle ride on an old steel framed bicycle with no gears and no suspension, completing a route which includes the ascent of legendary Box Hill in Surrey.
- A 21km run (half marathon) past some of London’s iconic land marks (Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Houses of Parliament, London Eye, Tower of London, Embankment Trafalgar Square, Green Park, The Albert Memorial, the Serpentine Lake) shod in what a poor Kenyan would have, a pair of “running sandals” cut by hand out of a disused Firestone car tyre, known in Kenya as “1000 Milers”!
Click here to learn more about Nick’s latest incredible challenge, the nursery project and how you might be able to help.