We’re really excited to announce that we’re the official fundraising partner of the Zest Challenge 2013 with Alpro.

The Zest Challenge is a unique event for women that involved 5 or 10k To be held over two weekends in 2013, 15 June at Hambledon Estate, Henley on Thames and 22June at Catton Hall, Derbyshire. With added obstacles like hay bales, nets, tyres, balance beams and a giant waterslide it’s not quite your average run.

The challenge in 2013 caters for all levels for fitness with a 5km and 10km distance. And due to the fantastic success of the 2012 event, the Zest Challenge has introduced two locations this year. The day starting with breakfast provided by Alpro, will be a wet, muddy and adventurous way for women to get outdoors with their friends and burn some energy.

Zest Challenge 2013 with Alpro is aiming to become a fun way for women to be active, as well as raise money for charitable causes close to their heart.

If you’d like to find out more heard on over to http://www.zest.co.uk/challenge2013/ where you can register for either Henley or Catton Hall, and don’t forget to create your Virgin Money Giving Fundraising for the Zest Challenge Henley or the Zest Challenge Catton Hall.

If you’ve been inspired to get on your bike following the fantastic summer of cycling last year Nightrider™ London could be the event for you.

The 100km route takes in London’s major landmarks: Tower Bridge, a deserted ‘City of London’, Canary Wharf, Piccadilly Circus, the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square and more…. The circular itinerary is clearly sign-posted so you can cycle at your own pace. And there’s full support and back up around the course.

If you’re interested you can sign up on your own, with a friend or in a team. Choose from over 160 charities to support. For full details of the event and to select the charity you’ll ride for visit www.nightrider.org.uk.

But hurry! You’ve only got until the 10 May to be able to register to ride for charity.

Win a Place on Nightrider™ London 2013

Our friends at Classic Tours who organise Nightrider™ have one free place up for grabs. To be in a chance to win just answer the following questions and email your answers to nightrider@classictours.co.uk by midnight 7 May 2013:

1.  How far is the Nightrider™ route?
2.  Name one of the start points.
3. Which French city will host Nightrider™ this year?

By entering the competition you agree that the organisers Classic Tours may contact you by email about their charity challenges. They will not pass your details to any third parties.  The  winner will be notified via email on the 8 May and they will need to register before the 10 May to claim their free entry. The Nightrider registration will close on the 10 May, so if the winner does not register before then they will not be able to take part.

Got a place already?

If you’ve already got your own place in Nightrider London, and haven’t created your Virgin Money Giving fundraising page yet you can get started right here and have your page collecting donations in just a few minutes.

This summer we’re spreading the love by giving away £2,000 in donations to help you raise more for the charities close to your heart.

Whether you’re taking part in an organised event or your own personal challenge, you can enter the prize draw every month throughout the summer to win a £500 donation to your fundraising page.

For every donation you receive on your page in May, June, July & August you’ll automatically receive one entry into a prize draw for that month. There’s £500 up for grabs each month throughout the draw, and because every donation gets you one entry, the more donations you receive the more chance you’ll have of winning.

If you’re already got your fundraising page set up, you can still take part, every donation you receive during the competition period will still gain you an entry.

So get yourself in the mood for the Summer of Love and set up your fundraising page. Your charity could soon be £500 better off terms and conditions apply.

And don’y forget, your fundraising is in safe hands with us, Virgin Money Giving is 100% not-for-profit so whether you win a donation or not, more of the money you raise will go to charity. In fact since launch, £5 million more was raised, thanks to fundraisers choosing Virgin Money Giving over JustGiving.*

Good luck!

*Figures based on a comparison of the cost of service and transaction costs of Virgin Money Giving with JustGiving, based on Virgin Money Giving’s fundraising total since launch in October 2009 up to 31 December 2012.

Our friends at the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon are holding their beautiful Autumn half marathon on the 6 October, and there’s still opportunities to take part.

Whether your company is looking for your team’s next competitive challenge, or you’re simply looking to challenge yourself and fundraise for a charity, there are guaranteed entries still available.

Corporate Challenge Places

With six or more people, your company team would be competing against hundreds of others to be the fastest team on the course, while also bringing motivation and healthier lifestyles to the work place. If your office has a running club, or there’s enough of you up for a challenge you can
Sign up your organisation’s team today and be guaranteed a place in this year’s race.

Run for Charity

Charities large and small from across the UK have guaranteed places for the 2013 Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon, giving you the chance to take part and raise money for an amazing cause.

The four ‘Golden Oak’ charities still have places in the event – Cancer Research UK, Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, Mind and Tommy’s

And there’s lots of other charities with guaranteed places take a look at the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon charity listings to see if a cause close to your heart has places available.

Got a place already?

If you were one of the lucky runner to pick up a place in the ballot, then why not raise a little (or a lot) for charity to. You can create your Virgin Money Giving fundraising page here in just a few minutes.

A huge well done to everyone who took part in the 2013 Virgin London Marathon! If you’ve woken up this morning and you’re still wearing your finisher medal it’s totally acceptable – you should be keeping it on for at least a week.

Now you’ve completed the run here’s 4 things you can do this week to boost your fundraising total

1. Update your fundraising page with a photo from Sunday. The official Marathon Photo images will be available shortly, or if you had a friend take a photo at the start or the finish it will help show everyone you did it.

2. Change the information on your page, let your supporters know how the run went, what time you did and how you feels to have run it.
3. Send a quick email around to everyone you now – including people who’ve already donated. Let them know how much you’ve raised so far, what time you did, and how it went, and don’t forget to include a link to your page. You might get some repeat donations.
4. You can download a finisher certificate with your time from the Virgin London Marathon, just put your details in here, you’ll find it just below your  marathon timings. It’s super useful to let everyone know you’ve finished.

We’d love to hear how it went for you, let us know by leaving a comment below.

Our friends at Virgin Money have packaged some of them up in this handy infographic.

As if running 26.2 miles wasn’t difficult enough, this bunch of runners are planning on making the Virgin London Marathon that little bit more challenging by wearing fancy dress and in the process raising money for lots of good causes.

If you’re spectating on Sunday keep your eyes peeled for ‘Foamy’ the fire extinguisher, a giant shoe, a chef, a Gorilla and a newly-married couple wearing wedding dresses. They’re just some of the characters challenging their respective Guinness World Records.

Newly-married couple Sophie and Toby McCorry from Rochester hope to cross the finish line ‘threshold’ together in 3:41:40 to break the Guinness World Record. Their training has been going well, ‘regular cross-dresser’ Toby has been helping Sophie complete the long runs, with only one breakdown in a Wickes car park! They both see Sunday as a “great way of showing their commitment to each other”.

Chef Chris Wheeler is a dab hand at running the London Marathon whilst ‘cooking’, he tossed a pancake for 26.2 miles 7 years ago. This year he’s carrying a 3kg stockpot along the route to raise money for Help a Capital Child. Chris got his place by winning a Capital FM competition, he’s running for the Breakfast Team and to clinch the Guinness World Record he needs to cook his way to the finish line within 5 hours.

Redhead Susie Hewer is trying to improve on her existing record this year for the “Longest Scarf Knitted Whilst Running a Marathon”. Susie started running 8 years ago and this will be her 31st marathon. She says it all started when a friend told her to ‘start acting her age’ so she took up knitting! Not sure her friend meant running whilst knitting. The record to beat isn’t about time it’s about length, Susie needs to beat her own record of 1 metre 62cm.

All of the fundraisers will be wearing their black ribbons on Sunday to show their support for the Boston Marathon. When asked about the events in Boston they all re-iterated the same message: “the fantastic spectacle of the Virgin London Marathon must go on. What happened on Monday just makes us more determined to complete the London Marathon and our record breaking challenges.”

If you’ve already collected your 2013 Virgin London Marathon race number, you might have spent some time at the ‘Pasta Party’ in the Virgin area at Expo.

All through the day a number of speakers take to the stage giving you race details, hydration advice, and pacer information to help you get around (full schedule here) including a number of celeb runners. You might have caught our ‘Higher or Lower’ game too.

Anyone who’s running can take part, you just need to pick up one of the huge red arrows being handed out as the game starts. our host Ore Oduba (from BBC Sport and Newsround) will be on stage guiding you though the game – simply guess whether the next runner number shown on the big screen will be higher or lower than the last one using your arrow.

The last runner left in the game will receive a £250 donation to the charity of their choice.

There’s still time to win, the approx timings for Friday & Saturday’s ‘Higher or Lower’ games are below (listen out for announcements in the Expo).

• Friday – 13:25
• Friday – 16:45
• Friday – 18:35
• Saturday – 11:40
• Saturday – 13.00
• Saturday – 15:10

Terms and Conditions apply (which are printed on the arrows in Expo).

1. Collect your race number and timing chip (sounds obvious but it’s super important for Sunday).
2. Stock up on Virgin London Marathon adidas Kit.
3. Vest Printing – there’s nothing like having someone cheer your name to get an extra bit of motivation.
4. Fundraising For Charity? Lots of the charities have their own stands so why not pop along and say hello, lots of them have cheering materials so your friends and supporters can make lots of noise, and you can find out where their cheering zone is on the course too.
5. Lucozade pacing band – want to keep a check on your Marathon pace as you’re running? Lucozade can give you a printed wristband with your finish time and mile splits.
6. The race day helpdesk – If you’ve got any last minute marathon questions stop by the Help Desk, the knowledgeable team can answer any of your questions
7. Pasta Party – After all that walking around you’ll need to refuel, why not visit the pasta party, take a seat and relax in front of the stage to get some last minute hints and tips on how to make the most of your Virgin London Marathon.Check out the full stage schedule here.
8. Virgin Money Giving Photo Booth – while you’re looking as fresh as a daisy, visit our Photo Booth and get your pre-race shot posted to Facebook or Twitter.
9. T-shirt and goody bag collection – don’t forget to pick up your newly printed t-shirt or vest on your way out, you’ll need that on Race Day.
   

Best of luck for  everyone who’s running on Sunday. we’ll also be out on the course to cheer you all along!

As photo calls go that was the most hectic of the week so far, but we always knew it would be with a certain special guest present – Mo Farah. Lining up alongside our British hopefuls Scott Overall and Amy Whitehead, Mo was in very good spirits, he even joked that being surrounded by photographers was “like being at a football match”.

After the exciting photo shoot it was time to ask questions in the press conference. The room was packed wall to wall with cameramen and journalists all eager to hear from the British stars.

We started with an excitable Mo who’s looking forward to testing the London Marathon course in anticipation for taking on the distance in the future. And when asked what he’ll do when he drops out at half way his response was “come back in and finish watching it on TV”.

Finishing first Brit is top of Scott Overall’s agenda. He says after training with Mo and spending the winter in Iten, Kenya he feels in good shape but doesn’t want to commit to a predicted time.

“Hazardous Amy”, nicknamed as she’s so clumsy and still has ‘baby brain’, didn’t mind revealing her target time. Currently her personal best is 2.33.44 from the Manchester Marathon but she’s gunning for sub 2.31 (World Championship qualifying time) and says that anything over that and she’d be disappointed. And with all her family coming to London to watch her in what she calls the “best marathon in the world for atmosphere” she’s hoping to impress.

Mo was asked if he suffers from ‘Baby Brain’ too, to which his response was, “no, I really enjoy having a young family and love being a parent. The only drawback is I get less time on Fifa!”

The streets of London are sure to be packed during Sunday’s race, cheering on all our British Contenders and Mo, so make the most of the “best marathon atmosphere in the world” to get you to the finish line. And don’t forget to hassle your friends and family for donations once you’ve completed your personal challenge.