I've got six days of final preparations to complete before stage five of the run around the world starts in Belgrade, Serbia. Amongst today's tasks was to make a visit to my sponsor D-Line in North Tyneside. Regular readers will know that D-line supported me on stage four and have very kindly offered further support for this current stage.
D-Line are all about invention and innovation in my opinion. Despite being a local company, their range of cable management products are shipped all over the world.
Their strategy of using innovation to drive success aligns very much with my own. Our partnership is one that has grown stronger over the last few years and without them the charity total would not be as high as it is. A very good recent example of this was when they paid the £688 production costs of the latest Run Geordie Run t-shirt. This meant that a very pleasing £1800 was raised for St Benedict's Hospice as a result. That's a brilliant return on their spend and I'm hugely grateful to them.
D-Line are also sponsors of rungeordierun.com and all proceeds from that deal have gone to charity.
Back to today and it was brilliant to talk to the room full of D-Line staff about my run around the world. There were some excellent questions put to me. This of course meant that I was able to tell some stories, that aren't often heard in my talks (mainly because I talk to a lot of schools and colleges).
My particular favourites are from the run across the USA. I talked about the encounter with the "weirdos" on route 66, the drugs bust in Oro Grande, being quesitoned at gun point in the Mojave Desert and the gang that I met in Springfield, Ohio. They are all great anecdotes in their own right and will surely have to feature in a book one day.
I also talked about how the world run came about, some of the other stages and of course why I raise funds for St Benedict's Hospice. Such was the great turnout, I think the entire company must have shut down for an hour!
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the whip round for St Benedict's Hospice and also to D-Line for very kindly matching their staff's donations.
The picture below shows some of the staff holding the new information leaflets that have been created for the next stage.
I'll leave the final word with my sponsor D-Line - "D-Line is a UK company with a global reputation for innovative cable management products.
Our range includes the world’s fastest cable trunking systems, as used by trade and consumers, to hide and protect cables in ways that blend with modern surrounds.
Market-leading fire-rated Safe-D Clips secure cables, while eliminating the risk of fires causing potentially fatal cable entanglements.
D-Line Cable Tidy and Cable Safety solutions include Cable Protectors that address trip hazards, Cable Tidy Units to contain extension sockets and cable clutter, and market leading Cable Organisers for cable management in homes and workplaces."
Market-leading fire-rated Safe-D Clips secure cables, while eliminating the risk of fires causing potentially fatal cable entanglements.
D-Line Cable Tidy and Cable Safety solutions include Cable Protectors that address trip hazards, Cable Tidy Units to contain extension sockets and cable clutter, and market leading Cable Organisers for cable management in homes and workplaces."
