JMB clocks up 10th marathon

jmb_admin

Sunday October 16th marked a milestone for the JMB Foundation and its association with the Medibank Melbourne Marathon Festival. 2016’s event was the 10th we’ve been involved with, and for the last seven of those we’ve been an official charity partner with the Melbourne Marathon.

Marathon day is always a special one for us because we see first-hand just how much support there is out there for the Foundation and the work we do. We’d like to acknowledge here the many different groups and individuals who contributed to make the 2016 Melbourne Marathon the success that it was.

We had a great turnout of team runners – and walkers – with 33 ambitious athletes running the full marathon, 58 signing up for the half marathon, 90 giving the 10 km track a go, 28 managing 5.7 kms, and 13 more sedate entrants walking 3 kms – but a good few of them had an extra load. A group of James’ friends from way back, now young mums, upped their work rate by pushing their babies in prams around the course. Great effort!

Our dedicated fundraisers appealed to their friends, families and colleagues to contribute to their campaigns to reward them for their efforts, which in turn rewarded JMB with $14,630 in donations. We thank everyone who started a campaign, or gave to one, and in particular Emma Humann who ran her first full marathon and more than doubled her fundraising goal of $1k, and Channel 9’s Alexis Daish, who raised almost $2k for JMB.

200-plus runners sporting our signature blue singlets and t-shirts on marathon day made quite an impact and helped to raise awareness of JMB. Our very warm thanks to our sponsors, Invesco and Old Carey Grammarians Association Community Support Fund, for so generously underwriting the cost of our shirts again this year. Such significant contributions mean we can put more money where it does the most good – into our grants program to help young people with ABI.

The event couldn’t take place without the huge army of volunteers required to make everything work on the day. JMB volunteers account for almost a quarter of those needed, and we are really proud of our 2016 team. The rain held off, but the wind was fierce and created quite a challenge, especially for drinks stations volunteers. Everyone did a great job! The result of their efforts was a $27,000 donation from the event organisers, so if you volunteered – THANK YOU. You’ve made an amazing difference for the people we help.

Our thanks also to super-volunteers Andrew Macready-Bryan, Andrew Mill and Nat Howard, who were on the job at the MCG around 5.30 am to make sure our course marshals had everything they needed, and to Tim and Anne McDonald who were responsible once again this year for organising and distributing JMB singlets and T-shirts for our team runners and volunteers.

We are always impressed by the amazing support so many people give to JMB, and we were even more overwhelmed than usual in this special 10th anniversary year. Thank you to everyone who joined in on marathon day. We hope we can look forward to having you on board again in 2017.