Bellshill woman to run London Marathon for Yorkhill

Oct 22 2009 by Shirley Bartynek, Hamilton Advertiser

A BELLSHILL woman is gearing up to take part in next year’s London marathon.

Marie Teevan, a team manager at Virgin Media in Bellshill, has secured a space for the run.

She has also set herself a goal to raise thousands of pounds for Yorkhill Children’s Foundation.

Next year, Virgin take the title sponsorship of the world-famous event and Marie pipped hundreds of hopeful colleagues to the post by winning one of just 14 places reserved for Virgin Media employees in the 2010 Marathon.

Marie will be running alongside the Virgin Group chairman and founder, Sir Richard Branson, who will be running his first-ever marathon at the event next April.

Virgin Media’s 14 runners will join over 35,000 people for the 26-mile course around the River Thames.

Marie, who ran her first marathon earlier this year, will be pounding the streets for the next seven months to give her the best possible chance of taking a full hour off her previous time of five and a half hours.

Marie said: “The Virgin London Marathon will be my second marathon – I was sure my first would also be my last – but it was such an unbelievable personal experience that I snapped up the chance to run it again.

“This one will be particularly special, as I’m raising money for some great causes. I want to raise as much as I can for Yorkhill Children’s Foundation, as I believe strongly in what they do and how they look after their patients. And running with the Virgin team, which includes Sir Richard Branson, is going to be amazing too!”

The London Marathon is considered to be the ultimate combination of sport and fundraising, and is the largest annual fundraising event in the world with over £40m raised in 2009. All 14 Virgin Media runners will be having fun whilst trying to beat their fundraising targets.

Marie has a target to raise of over £5000 for both the Foundation and Virgin Unite, the non-profit foundation of the Virgin Group.