Announcing Sport Relief and Team Honk 2014

It’s back, Baby.   Comic Relief was this year and that means one thing.   Sport Relief is next.   And I am thrilled that Team Honk have been asked by Comic Relief to help support and promote the events they have planned.  And let me tell you, they are some plans.

And already there are bags of excitement, BAGS.   Weeeeelllll you know that the award-winning, fun-raising phenomenon commonly known as TEAM HONK is all about the excitement, and the build up.   So despite Sport relief not actually kicking off until March 2014 it launches today and we are beyond excited about what those lovely people at Comic Relief have come up with.

Which means we need YOU <points finger like the bloke on that famous poster>.   All of you that made Team Honk that fun-raising phenomenon last year, and who have asked if we would resurrect it again, guess what?!  The answer is a big fat YES.

You know that Team Honk won a Brilliance in Blogging Award for Commentary at the BiBs this year well did you also know that Comic Relief’s Good News activity for Red Nose Day, which Team Honk collaborated on (and the reason the three of us went to Ghana), has been shortlisted in the Media Relations category at the PRCA awards!  This is incredibly exciting and we have to wait until November to find out the results.

But on to next year, and SPORT RELIEF.

Now don’t look at me like that.   I know the idea of me and sport is like (I looked to Mr B and Annie for two things that really don’t go together and Annie said “egg and jam”)    …. egg and jam but seriously this is not about running a marathon or swimming the Thames.   It isn’t about doing something massive.   Team Honk, and Sport Relief themselves, just want as many people as possible involved all raising money for great causes.    It is about taking part, and getting sponsored to do so and then seeing that money making a huge difference.

Team Honk’s mission is simple.  If you use social media in any way, shape or form and want to help raise money you are in.  Or if your family want to take part, you are in.   You are a member of Team Honk.  We hit the ground running by announcing what we were doing on February 1st this year for Comic Relief and Red Nose Day and by March 21st we had raised £10,000.

TEN THOUSAND POUNDS IN SIX WEEKS.     Just imagine what we can do this year with six months of planning.  What YOU <does that pointy thing again> could be involved in helping to raise.

Seriously, think what we can do if we really all put our minds to it.

And it couldn’t be more simple.   Sport Relief are launching today with the Sainsbury’s Sport Relief Games which will take place on Friday 21st to Sunday 23rd March 2014, in events being organised all over Britain.  Which means virtually on your doorstep.   There is no excuse basically.  You don’t have to travel hundreds of miles, you can do it in your home town.

However,  if you do fancy doing something slightly epic you could sign up to do the events in the Olympic Park in London.   Yes the actual Olympic Park in that London.   You could channel your inner Sir Chris Hoy, Ellie Simmonds or Mo Farah and start and end your event in Olympic style.

Of course, Team Honk would love to see as many people as possible doing an official event over that weekend, whether it is taking part in your local Sport Relief mile with your kids, joining a Swimathon event round the country or even joining the new cycling events in London, Glasgow and Manchester.   So you can:

• Walk, jog or run the Sainsbury’s Sport Relief Mile, choosing from 1, 3 or 6 mile distances, at venues near you, or at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic park
• Make a splash with the Sainsbury’s Sport Relief Swimathon, and choose from a range of individual and team distances, including 1.5km, 2.5km and 5km or you can choose your own distance with SimplySwim
• Get on your bike and take part in the Sainsbury’s Sport Relief Cycle, taking place in Glasgow, Manchester and London. Participants can cycle 25 miles, 50 miles or get the whole family involved in a 3 mile cycle.

I could go on and on about the events and all the info.  Or you could just go to the Sport Relief website and have a mooch around and find out all the info there 🙂   AND SIGN UP!!!!

Now Annie and Penny will be leading a Team Honk London team in the Olympic venue, so if you fancy joining them, check out the amazing events on offer at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and sign up for one of those. You can do any event, or combination of events to be part of the London team. You can join Team Honk London facebook group here.   We will use that group to help answer each other’s logistical questions and “Anybody doing the 9.15 event with me?” type questions.   We will also share some training plans that Sport Relief have been working on.

Lots of people have asked us how they can get involved and now you know.

And if you want to do more maybe you could be team leader for a team in your town?  Maybe check out the events happening near you, sign up and then get a bunch of mates to do the same and be the team leader for your team.

When you have done that we would love to hear from you!  Could you be Team Honk Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Nottingham, Bristol, Brighton, Edinburgh?   Team Honk Snowdon came together very quickly and we were amazed at what a pooled resource of heads achieved, including accommodation and donated equipment.    How about you set up a Facebook Group and invite some mates in to get the ball rolling?   Do let us know what you are up to though, we are keen to keep everything under the Team Honk Umbrella so we can support and promote your efforts.

We will sign Team Honk as a single team as we did last year when the Sport Relief site opens its sponsorship pages in November and then we can all fund raise under the Team Honk umbrella so that your fund raising contributes to one enormous total.

Oh and if that wasn’t enough there is also a Team Honk thing.   You know how we love a thing of our own.  A secret thing at this stage.  But a thing that we are doing along side the official Sport Relief things.   A thing for which there is no excuse for you to not get involved.   And boy do we want you to involved.   NEED you involved or it won’t work.

It is a secret thing of extraordinary proportions and we will tell you more on October 16th when we launch SecretThing2.   But for now it will stay as a secret thing whilst you all concentrate on signing up to Sport Relief Games.

And let us know you have done it!   You can Tweet Team Honk too and we will get behind you right from the off.  We will RT all Tweets mentioning that you have signed up.   We will also be linking all info and posts back up on the main Team Honk site like we did this year.  We had nearly 300 bloggers linked up, can we do that again?!

PS if you think “well I can’t do that, I wont be able to get any sponsorship and what good is something like £10”   let me remind you of this post I wrote earlier this year that explains exactly what £10 can do.

Right then, on your marks

Get set

GO…….

You still here?

I said GO!