Headway East Northants London Marathon 2024

Headway East Northants London Marathon 2024

This is an article by Eve Burgess, aged 14, daughter of Sharine Burgess, Partner in the Serious Injury department and head of the Personal Injury team based at Shoosmiths Northampton. Headway was Sharine’s charity when she was President of NLS.

The London Marathon first took place in 1981 and is one of the most popular marathons in the world for runners and spectators alike. This year was no exception as around 48,000 runners took part in perfect running conditions on 21 April 2024. This figure included 31 volunteers running to raise much needed funds for local charity Headway East Northants (HEN).

HEN operates an activity centre facility in Irthlingborough, Northants. The charity was established in 1999 as an affiliation of Headway UK, the brain injury association. It provides a range of services for people aged 18 and over that have an acquired brain injury in East Northamptonshire, including counselling, education and respite care, with support also provided to their families.

The work HEN does to support, develop and enrich the lives of adults with acquired brain injuries in Northamptonshire is vital and the money raised by volunteers running the London Marathon is crucial to enable the charity to carry on doing great work in our community.

I am volunteering for HEN as part of my Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award and went down to the London with HEN to watch the event. I had a brilliant, but windy, vantage point at Limehouse at the 14 mile point and took these amazing photos.

It was a great experience. Laura Richards, Admin and Fundraising Co-ordinator at HEN, was with me on the day and said: “It’s an absolute pleasure to be here today to cheer on our Team HEN London Marathon Runners. Their commitment to fundraising for our small charity has been inspiring and everyone at HEN greatly appreciates how hard they have worked to get here. The London Marathon is our main source of fundraising, every penny raised ensures the continuation of our service supporting adults with acquired brain injury within our community, quite simply we couldn’t do that without our marathon runners and their supporters.”

To find out more about HEN please visit their website: HEN - Home (headwayeastnorthants.org.uk)

By Eve Burgess (aged 14)