In the past weeks Aspen colleagues have participated in numerous charities, please read on to find out more!

18/11/2011
By Caron Broadbridge

This year for the first time I decide to take part in the Cancer Research Race for life to raise money for cancer research. In previous years I have admired the people who have taken part but not done anything about it myself. This year I decided to change that and take part and try and help others.

It is a charity close to my heart and I know many friends and family who's lives have been turned upside down by Cancer.

My 9 year old son and myself finally completed the 5k at Lingfield Race Park in September.

My Son and I managed to raise over £235 with the kind sponsorship from friends, family and lots of Colleagues at Aspen Pumps.

So thank you to all and I hope to do it again next year and Run it this time with no illness or injury!

28/10/2011
By Miles Hardy

In August, Adrian Collins (Customer Services Manager), Joe Rose (Product Design / Big Foot Technical Sales) and I took part in a charity mountain bike ride for the British Heart Foundation.

The event took place over the much revered South Downs Way, encompassing 35,000 vertical feet of climbing, and 104 miles of off road terrain, all in one day, with only two weeks training due to illness!

We were up early in order to have enough time to make the whole distance; within the first 20 miles we had our first puncture... luckily this would be our only one! The first 50 odd miles seemed easy enough, with all of us needing our lunch at around 55 miles (this was already the longest MTB ride any of us had ever done)! By 65 miles in we had reached the highest point on the trip Devils Dyke. Once again we all felt fresh and raring to go. The diets varied for all of us, Joe took the healthy options, Adrian was on the Hi-Tech energy bars, and I was going with Glynn O'Brien's cold sausage and Mars bar idea!

The hardest part was yet to come, with as much climbing as we had already done still to go in the final 35 miles, the hardest part was to finish...

Eventually we made it back whilst getting dark, in a time of 15 hours total!

We raised over £500.00 for the British Heart Foundation. Needless to say, we also earned some stiff muscles for a few days too!

The second challenge of summer was organised in conjunction with one our French distributors Salina. Joe and I set sail for Pelvoux in the Alps, the Course was a half marathon distance (much longer with our navigation skills) with over 700 meters of vertical climbing and the same in decent too! And orienteered to add to the task.

There were several challenges throughout the day, including a ravine zip wire, rope climbs, slack lining, and many more. All of which are much harder after the distance we travelled! We experienced some heavy rain and thunder storms during the day, but mainly the temperature was around 30 degrees! In standard Style for our challenges I was suitably unprepared, rocking up in the morning with nothing more than shorts, a tee shirt and some Vans slip on shoes!

As usual nothing could hold us back! We completed every challenge of the day, including battling some vicious hangovers (many thanks to our very generous hosts).

At the end of the challenge, being that we are in no way trained for walking, both Joe and I said that we felt more broken from this than the South Downs Way!

But both challenges were very much enjoyed, and we look forward to the summer of 2012 in order to take on more challenges for charity!