2013 World Challenges at Home

Given up your New Year's resolution and looking for a new challenge?

Why not walk, swim, cycle or run famous worldwide routes but in as many sessions you need, whatever location suits you best and all in support of research into Cancer, Heart Disease or Global Health & Biodiversity.

What are the Challenges?

Walk 150 miles of the Great Ocean Road
Swim 21 miles of the English Channel
Cycle 960 miles from John O'Groats to Land's End
Run 26 miles per week of the New York Marathon
 
Participants can pick a challenge and do it at their local gym, swimming pool, park or cycle path!

How long do I have to complete the Challenge?

You can complete a challenge in either eight weeks or twelve weeks, whatever you prefer.  All challenges must be complete by Friday 24 May 2013.

The mileage per week is as follows:
 
8 Week Challenge
Walk - 18.7 miles per week
Swim - 2.62 miles per week
Cycle - 120 miles per week
Run - 26 miles per week
 
12 Week Challenge
Walk - 12.5 miles per week
Swim - 1.75 miles per week
Cycle - 80 miles per week
Run - 26 miles per week
 

What will you be raising money for?

Heart Disease

Help fund essential research into the biggest killers in the UK.  An estimated total of 2.6 million live with the ravaging effects of heart and circulatory disease.  Glasgow is a strategically important centre for research into heart disease and stroke. 

Glasgow University has an excellent reputation in cardiovascular medicine and has specific strengths in:

• understanding the mechanisms responsible for chronic heart failure including heart muscle damage and heart rhythm disorders
• the role of oxidant stress with regard to arterial disease
• unravelling the processes responsible for high blood pressure and its relationship with obesity and Type II diabetes
• understanding the relationships between genetics and high blood pressure and arterial disease
• internationally renowned clinical trials which have contributed to significant advances in the control of high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol
• production of treatments to improve the outcome of patients with heart failure

Support Us
The Heart Disease fund is large and has over 200 donors.  This means that we have been able to support both small and large research projects over the last 5 years.

The most recent project that the fund has supported focused on the effect of exercise-training on the function of the heart. We have also been able to help support studies into stem cell research and stroke plus clinical fellows and post-graduate researchers as well as provide essential equipment such as MRI Scanners and ECG machines.

Support for Heart Disease will go towards vital equipment and the attraction and support of the very best professors, clinicians and scientists in this field.

Cancer Research

You can support cancer research at the University of Glasgow in the following ways:

Beatson Pebble Appeal

The Beatson Pebble Appeal was launched in 2007 to raise £10 million to build a new cancer research facility in Glasgow. We are delighted that the appeal has reached its £10 million target and the centre will open in spring 2013.

We continue to receive many generous gifts and welcome all further donations. These will be directed towards staffing and equipment costs in the new building. Through the provision of the most up-to-date facilities and equipment our aim is to attract world-class cancer research scientists to drive this vital work.

Paul O’Gorman Leukaemia Research Centre

The Paul O’Gorman Leukaemia Research Centre has brought Glasgow’s expert clinicians and researchers together.  The centre also provides a much-needed translational research laboratory, ensuring that patients, clinicians and researchers alike benefit from some of the country’s most advanced facilities and equipment. 

The Centre’s proximity to other regional and national centres of excellence ensures that the site is a centre of excellence for research into leukaemia.

Brain Tumour Research Fund

The Brain Tumour Research Fund (BTRF ) supports research in Glasgow and the West of Scotland.  The Fund provides vital funding to smaller brain tumour research projects which often produce very valuable findings and allows the BTRF to put up a stronger case for larger scale funding.

On-going and proposed projects include research investigating whether new drugs can be combined with radiotherapy to improve brain tumour cure rates and clinical research using MRI scanning to predict where brain tumours are most likely to recur after radiotherapy.  The fund also helps support psychological studies investigating how best to support patients and their families before, during and after treatment.

Global Health and Biodiversity

The increasing incidence of antibiotic resistance and the emergence of new disease-causing agents mean that infectious diseases are still a major cause of death and disability in both the UK and the developing world.

In addition, global increases in the prevalence and spread of infectious disease have demonstrated the role of the environment in driving epidemics in human and animal populations.

Impoverished tropical areas in particular continue to suffer substantial human and animal losses from infectious diseases such as malaria, rabies, sleeping sickness, and other parasitic infections, as well as viral infections such as polio, that have long been eradicated from developed countries.

Massive improvements in the control of malaria and other insect-borne diseases like Dengue fever have been attained in recent years. However these successes are being undermined by ecological and evolutionary responses of insects and their parasites that allow them to resist control.  These problems are compounded by the rapid rates of environmental change such as temperature rises and deforestation that enhance the proliferation of insect vector populations and their contact with humans.

We are working on cutting edge research to tackle infectious disease, as well as capacity building, knowledge transfer and training in partner countries in some of the poorest regions of the world, where these problems have the greatest impacts on human and environmental health.

Support us
‎A gift to our work in Global Health and Biodiversity will have a direct and immediate impact on our ability to find new solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems.  Your gifts will support:

• our researchers working to find new solutions to combating infectious disease
• the training and equipping of African and UK students working in partnership on Global Health and Biodiversity conservation
• life-saving public health interventions and the training of researchers to develop tools and implement effective policies in ecohealth
• the equipping of biodiversity monitoring teams and the training of the conservationists and researchers of the future through funding of scholarships and training courses for UK and overseas students

 
Entry Information

1. The entry fee for the World Challenges at Home is £10 per participant. This fee will cover the administration costs of coordinating this fundraising challenge. The entry fee ensures that all money raised in sponsorship will go towards your chosen cause.
 
2. Each participant is required to raise a minimum of £100 in sponsorship.  If you would like to raise with a sponsorship form instead, please download your preferred form on the right hand side of this page.
 
3.  Each participant can download a Record Card on the right hand side of this page.  This will help to keep track of your mileage per week for the preferred challenge depending on whether you opt to complete the challenge in eight or twelve weeks.
 
4. Every participant will receive a certificate on completion of the challenge.
 
5. To register click: 

https://www.alumni.gla.ac.uk/netcommunity/sslpage.aspx?pid=2738