We’d like to say a massive thank you to every single one of you who helped us get there!

It’s been an incredibly challenging journey so far, so thank you all so much for your donations, encouragement, enthusiasm and participation in our events.

Now we’re about to embark on the Kinabalu Challenge itself – a 6-day expedition in the Malaysian Borneo – running, mountain biking, kayaking, rafting and hiking our way, in hot and humid conditions, to the 4100m summit of Mt Kinabalu.

The money we’ve raised will give young people selected by the Prince’s Trust from disadvantaged backgrounds the life-changing opportunity to go on a 10 week Raleigh expedition, where they will work on valuable community and environmental projects around the world (for example, in Borneo, building Gravity Water Feeds for remote communities, or building new enclosures for Sun Bears at a Jungle Conservation Centre). Raleigh creates diverse teams of young people, encouraging them all to challenge their preconceptions and expand their ambitions.

Thanks to both Dan Maggs and Debra Hay from Raleigh for supporting our fundraising effort!

We’d also like to say a special thanks to our various managers at Capgemini who’ve given us the flexibility and support to fit fundraising around our day jobs.

A massive, massive thanks to John Gillard, Liz Benison and Julie Fisher for supporting us as the Capgemini Kinabalu Challenge team, believing we could do it and pushing us when we needed it.

And finally, thanks to Ali for being there for the first half of the journey.

Right, enough of that – time to go to Borneo!!

If there’s any mobile coverage at all, we’ll try and tweet from the Challenge whenever we can at www.twitter.com/borneoforthis

THANK YOU!!

- Amy, Andy, Dan and Oli
Team “Borneo for this”

It’s been an incredible adventure so far, and the fundraising has been a much greater challenge than any of us could ever have imagined, but we’re now over £9000 towards out £10k target.

That makes us all incredibly proud, but there is still a way to go!

If anyone can help out by contributing even a small amount towards that final £850, please make your donation at http://www.justgiving.com/borneoforthis

The money we’re raising is giving young people who’ve had a bad life so far the opportunity to turn it around by proving to themselves that they can do some good in the world. That means they go and work on incredibly valuable community projects with Raleigh all around the world (for example, in Borneo – building Gravity Water Feeds to give remote communities much needed clean, fresh water, or building enclosures at the Sun Bear Conservation Centre or many more).

Really important, valuable stuff on its own – plus it’s helping young people from disadvantaged backgrounds realise their potential to grow into young leaders who can have a positive impact in the world. So it’s a double win!

Please help us reach that £10k.

If you’ve already contributed, can you think of a friend who might want to support this cause? Passing on the message is just as valuable as making a donation!

Thank you.

You’ll notice a few people in that video look just slightly tired and worn out. Well, this is why:

The Kinabalu Challenge – 9 stages over 6 days

1. (Mon 22 January 2010 – a.m.) 4km running race

After just two days of acclimatisation to the extreme heat and humidity of Borneo, the challenge kicks off with a 4k race into the jungle. I guess Lonely Planet’s advice “do not do anything too physically demanding and avoid strenuous activity when you arrive in a hot climate” is kind of out of the window then!

2. (Mon – p.m.) Setting up camp

A nice hotel maybe? OK, a camp site? Tents even? Nope, this is proper Bear Grylls extreme survival stuff – building our own hammocks, shelter, fire – right out there in the jungle amidst all the mud, insects, cobras, scorpions and tropical rainfall.

3. (Tue – a.m.) Mountain bike / relay run – 6k – very hilly

After a trek out into the heart of the jungle, this stage involves taking it in turns biking and running on 6k of muddy off-road terrain, Camelbak’s most definitely required!

4. (still Tue – p.m.) White Water Rafting

Then, in the afternoon, white water rafting back to camp. Time to get those upper body muscles engaged.

5. (Wed – a.m.) Bamboo Rafting

Yesterday too easy? OK, this time we have to build our own rafts and race back up-river, remember all this time we’re competing against 7 other teams.

6. (Wed – still a.m.) 8.5k bike/run

Flatter terrain this time, so longer distance, not like we’ll be getting slightly knackered by this point or anything!

7. (Wed – p.m.) Kayak relay race

2-man kayaks now. Probably in torrential rain. This is a very tough day.

8. (Fri) Up the mountain!

Mt Kinabalu. The biggest one in South-East Asia. Described as the “Stair Master from HELL”, we will be ascending from 2000m to 3400m on this day – which should take us about 5-7 hours and really work those calf muscles.

9. (Sat) 2am start, to the 4100m peak

As if this isn’t hard enough already, let’s get up at 2am for the final stretch to the 4100m peak of Mt Kinabalu. This time we’re raising against the sun-rise. Steep, rocky, freezing cold and in the pitch dark.

But that is the challenge we’re embarking upon in 26 days time. That’s the crazy thing we’re doing for charity. That’s what we’re doing to persuade and inspire people to donate to Raleigh’s youth development programme: to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds get out there, and to help Raleigh make an impact on community projects around the world. That’s what our £10,000 target is for.

We’ve got 26 days.

We’ve got £862.86 left to raise.

As we are about to embark on the toughest, craziest challenge of our lives, please help us out with £5, £10 or whatever you can manage – http://www.justgiving.com/borneoforthis

Thank you.

Hell Runner – I did it!

Originally uploaded by Spanner Dan

Wow, never before have I seen / ran through / slipped all over / waded up to my chest through quite so much mud!

It was VERY tough, but I completed the 10-mile Hell Runner cross-country race quite a bit faster than my 2 hour target – in 1 hour and 31 minutes

The first muddy puddle that you had no choice but running through was the moment I realised, right, let’s just go for this. Yes, I’m going to get ridiculously muddy, and yes, my feet will be absolutely squelchingly soaked. But 2000 other people are doing this with me, and at least it isn’t raining!

From the firecrackers and smoke grenades that marked the start to the 3-piece band marked the half-way point, it wasn’t actually too bad.

Then came the “bog of doom”- chest-deep gloopy, cold and energy-sapping thick mud, followed of course by a massive muddy scramble. After that they just kept it coming – ridiculously long, steep hills, lots of scrambling and sliding up and down – it was certainly hard to keep going at times.

Then atop another tough hill, suddenly there was another steeply-embanked 20-30m river crossing, just as deep as the first. Then more hills, more mud, and more wading. You get the idea.

But then all of a sudden it was the finish line. And I sprinted for it! I had completed Hell Runner. I felt ready for anything!! Ready for Borneo certainly, bring it on!

This is the first big event in my training in the run up to Borneo.

It’s going to be nature at its toughest. It’s 11 miles (longer than I’ve ever run before). That’s almost a half marathon, but I think it’s going to be much tougher with rough terrain, steep hills and muddy pools to navigate.

So I’ve got to train hard over the next couple weeks. On Saturday I did my first really long practice run – from Clapham Junction, 1.5 times around Clapham Common, back to Brixton, then twice around Brockwell Park. Mapping it out when I got home, I was pleasantly surprised that it was a total of 9.3 miles – so not far off my target.

I think the longest I ran before was Bay to Breakers in San Francisco in 2005. That was 7.5 miles, which I did in 1:06. My target is to match that pace at Hell Runner.

Please wish me luck! Or even better, make a donation to show your support – we’re over 2/3 of the way towards our target and it is certainly feeling like very hard work now!

Time to get out the devil’s horns…

I think we were all very tempted, but for one of us, it was perfect timing to grasp this opportunity of a lifetime.

So Ali is off to Borneo next week, not for a 9-day team challenge, but to spend 8 months living there, organising community projects and expeditions for young people. We’re all a little bit jealous, and wish him all the best on his amazing adventure!

Then we hit a big milestone in September – over £5,000 raised – over half-way to our target!!

This really is testament to the hard work that we’ve all put in together as a team, as well as our individual fundraising efforts, and of course all the generous people who’ve made donations.

Thanks everyone – we’re changing lives here!

I had intended just to go along for the fundraising, but it turned out that a few people didn’t turn up, so I was able to run in the end. Finding this out five minutes before the start, I quickly got changed and fastened Rebecca Shepherd’s number to my bright blue Capgemini t-shirt.

Dan and Ali after the race

It was a great race – much better weather than last year – and always really motivating to run in such a huge crowd.

Checking the results today, to my delight it appears that I (running as Rebecca Shepherd) came 472nd in the Women’s race! (and 3rd amongst the 29 Capgemini women!)

If I had been wearing a man’s number, my time of 27:46 would have put me in at 4550 out of the 11,721 men, or 18th out of Capgemini’s 61. So quite respectable for 5.6km, but actually quite a bit slower than last year’s time of 25:00. I clearly need to step up the running in my training.

I’m in absolute awe of Alex Pilcher from Capgemini who came 13th with an incredible time of 17:46. Well done Alex!

Many of the Capgemini runners were running to raise money for Borneo for this. In total, almost £400 was raised through this event alone. Thank you so much to everyone who raised sponsorship and everyone who sponsored them. We’ll be announcing the winner of the prize for greatest amount raised tomorrow.

Dan and Ali after the race

Last month, I started using MapMyFitness to track my training progress. It’s a pretty powerful application, allowing you to map routes and log all of your training – whether it’s running, cycling, hiking, swimming or exercise in the gym.

A couple of features I really like in the mapper:

1. It automatically fits your route to roads and paths – so you get your full distance, not just the estimation you’d have if you had to use straight lines.
2. It shows you an elevation profile of your route. So that really hard hill on my cycle to work is only actually a 5% gradient. That’s enough to wake you up in the morning, believe me!

It also allows you to set goals. So I set a goal of cycling 150 miles last month, which I achieved (with only some pain)  by cycling to work about twice a week. This month, 300 miles is my target!

My only gripe is that – unless you get the Premium version – it’s completely advert-ridden. Apart from that it’s a very useful tool for keeping the motivation up.

Does anyone have any experience using the “Premium version” or any other tools for tracking training?

Me and Dad climbing up Mt Arkle

Properly started training for Mt Kinabalu now!

As well as cycling to work 4 times last week (which feels great – try it!), just spent a long weekend in the Scottish Highlands – on the far north-west coast – which is absolutely stunning.

Did two mountains – of course nowhere near the scale of Mt Kinabalu yet, but hey, building up slowly to November!

On the first day, went up Stac Polly – steep climbing in the heat of the sun and definitely a bit scary up on the craggy top.

On the second day, my Dad and I (and Sadie, our dog, who is also a great mountaineer), went up Mt Arkle – a long, hard and very rocky ascent up to 787m, where we were rewarded with spectacular views.

Great thing about the far north of Scotland is it only really slightly hints at getting dark, so we were walking until about 9pm, which felt like late afternoon!

It’s also stunningly beautiful and very wild and remote. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who likes the outdoors.

That was 787m. In November, our challenge with Mt Kinabalu is 4100m. It’s going to be tough.

I thought a nice way to start here would be with some introductions. So, I’m Dan, I’ve been with the Business Technology Consulting graduate scheme in Capgemini for just over a year. And I’m almost certainly the person most of my friends would say is most likely to want to spend 9 days in the rainforest fighting off leeches!

Having spent two fantastic weekends volunteering on community projects with Raleigh, it’s really exciting to be doing something much bigger with this organisation.

And it doesn’t get much bigger than this. £10,000 is a massive target. It’s a little bit daunting, but we’re approaching it with all our energy and enthusiasm and we’re damn determined to reach, no, exceed it. What that means for you is probably two things:

1. We’ll be asking you to donate money at every possible opportunity. The easiest way to support the cause is through our Justgiving on-line fundraising page. Please do give what you can for this great cause.
2. You’ll get the opportunity to participate in all the fun and crazy events and activities we’re planning over the coming months. First up will be The Go Game in London – an immersive urban adventure and something that I’m giddily excited about!

Meanwhile, I’ve been living my own vegan challenge for the last 27 days. It’s been tough, but I’m very glad that I have so many friends who’ve enjoyed taunting me with meat and sponsoring me for the privelage!

Stay tuned for all the latest news on those fun and crazy events, and everything else Ali, Amy, Andy and I get up to in our training and fundraising effort leading up to November.

And if you have any great fundraising suggestions or ideas, please do leave us a comment…