The Blakemore Foodservice staff tackle the Banks’ 10K run for Heartlands Hospital Charity

Back in January this year Nikki Hill’s husband, Chris Hill was rushed into Heartlands Hospital and received two lifesaving operations. Now, the couple along with the help of fellow employees are fundraising until May 2019 to say thank you for saving Chris’ life.

Whilst Chris was in Heartlands Hospital he was treated for an Aortic Rupture which caused blood to pump into his chest cavity, he was given a very small chance of surviving. The Cardiac team performed Aortic Aneurysm Surgery where they fitted stents and drained the blood from his chest cavity and later performed a second surgery to remove a blood clot that had lodged in his left arm.

Earlier this year Nikki had organised a charity fun day which had raffle prizes donated from Dudley Zoo, Snowdome, Paintballing and many more! More recently Nikki organised her team to take part in Banks’ 10K Wolverhampton run which saw 12 other colleagues from The Blakemore Foodservices take part too!

When asked about the race itself Nikki said: “Out of the 12 colleagues that took part in the 10k run some of the guys sprinted their way round in less than an hour and others took a little longer but everyone made such a fantastic effort and trained really hard to complete such a task! We all started in high spirits but the last mile and half became very difficult for us all after a huge hill! The spectators and other runners made it easier egging each other on and keeping everyone’s morale up. It was such a fantastic high to see the finish line and all the crowd cheering you on right to the end”

So far Nikki has raised an amazing £1100 this year and is already planning more fundraising events such as dress down days, bake sales, games days at work, Christmas jumper days and raffles. Nikki also said, “I am planning to take part in other events such as the Colour Run, Pretty Muddy and the Iron Man challenge if we can find anyone brave enough to enter!”

Sian Averill, Fundraising Manager for Heartland Hospital Charity said: “Thank you so much to Nikki and The Blakemore Foodservice staff, the Charity is extremely grateful for this generous donation! Nikki is going ‘over and above’ to raise money to support patients like Chris, taking on the challenge of running 10K is certainly not an easy, Well done”

For more information on how you too can get involved in a charity event of your own, please click the link here