Starting on Christmas Day, one Tandragee man will be running a half marathon every day for 12 days to raise money for the Children’s Heartbeat Trust.
Lee Vennard will be up with the lark on the big day to kick start his efforts, not finishing until January 6, with the hopes that he can raise £1,200 for the charity that did so much for his family following the birth of his son.
Louis was born on July 30, 2020, with congenital heart disease and required travel to Dublin numerous times for surgery, during which time the Children’s Heartbeat Trust provided vital emotional and financial support.
Thankfully, Louis emerged healthy on the other side, which gave Lee the motivation to take party in fundraising events to help give back to the charity.
Said Lee: “When you travel away for surgery with your child, there are a lot of unknowns. They [Children’s Heartbeat Trust] tell you what happens and what to expect and put your mind at ease.
“Once I had experienced that I decided I had to do something to pay them back.”
The charity themselves have a ‘mile a day in May’ challenge every year, which Lee and his wife decided to take part in, raising nearly £4,000 for the charity.
“At the end of that year, through the fundraising of everyone, they were able to buy another ambulance, and you could see how much benefit that was,” Lee said.
“The following year I did a 10k a day challenge for Marie Curie in October and we raised around £1,500 for it.
“I like the idea of pushing myself a bit more and doing it every day, then it came into my head about the 12 days of Christmas. I’m going to start on Christmas Day when everybody will be sitting down to their dinner and whatnot, so I think that perked up quite a lot of people’s attention.”
Lee will run 13.1 miles every day of the challenge, and will be joined by family and friends on some of the days.
Speaking on Louis, Lee says that in ‘layman’s terms,’ his son was born with a “massive hole in his heart” and that the valves in his heart were failing also.
Lee explained: “Within the first week of him being born, we were down in Dublin for a couple of weeks for them to repair the valve in his heart. Then in April, we had to go down to Dublin again for the repair of the hole in his heart.
“We were down there for another couple of weeks and the surgery itself was ten hours long.
“He has recovered really well for it and he’s now on quarterly observations. He needs a valve in his heart replaced so we’re currently waiting to the point where he’s big enough for them to change it.
“They’re going to replace it with either a pig or cow valve. Once you start growing as a human, they’re able to then put in a mechanical valve which has a much longer lifespan.”
He continued: “Louis was born on the 30th of July, 2020, in the middle of COVID. That was very hard because we didn’t get him home until October time.
“Me and my wife had to take turns to go in for visiting and we were so isolated. My parents didn’t get to see him until he came home so they only got to see him through FaceTime as no visitors were allowed on the ward.
“That’s when we were introduced to the charity and having people to talk to during those times. It was all so unknown and very very scary.
“When we were down in Dublin, we went down with questions like: ‘How long are we going to be there? How long is the recovery going to take? Will there be any complications?’
“The charity were making phone calls and checking that we were both keeping ok.
“They also sent money to our accounts because we were down for the two-week period, so they sent money for us to be able to feed ourselves essentially.”
Lee adds that through the charity, they became close with other families that have went through the same thing.
“You sort of become like a little family with those people that you spend time with, especially in the beginning. When he was born we spent two to three months in a hospital with those five or six people on the ward.
“They were all we really saw at the time because we couldn’t see our family. They were the only people that we could really have a close bond with.”
You can visit Lee’s donation page by clicking here.
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