Hi everyone, last little push to make it to the finish line of the Weird Wonderful Brain Fundraiser.
Every donation counts, please share on your social media so we can reach as many people as possible.
Lots of love, Veronique
Albeit the rain and the wind, we successfully completed the 2nd fundraiser Adventure Race. 4 teams on board in Blenheim and an absolutely fantastic effort from each of these teams! Well done to each of you and thank you for all your support!
The Weird Wonderful Brain fundraiser remains open until April 30th, please share the link amongst your network so we can keep getting that much closer to our objective.
All the best, Véro
Thanking all of you who have already contributed to the Weird Wonderful Brain Fundraiser for the benefit of The Encephalitis Society. The page will remain open until the end of April so let's keep the good work going in terms of raising awareness of encephalitis and ABI.
The week following the big adventure race was pretty much payback week for me. The brain definitely took a while to recover but I feel like I'm finally slowly getting there!
I wanted to keep tabs of how I'd recover from this big race this time around, so I've made a compilation of videos "pre" and "post" adventure race day. I wanted it to be a true and honest reflection of how brain recovery occurs once it's been put under pressure following a brain injury...the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (not necessarily in this particular order though). It's a bit long, but if you feel like watching the evolution of brain recovery, I've shared the link with you.
Once again, many thanks and please share the Give a Little page on your social media. This is awareness which is greatly needed in beautiful New Zealand and in so many other countries.
Lots of love, Vero
We did it...9 hrs and 45 mins and 46 km of kayaking, biking and trekking around beautiful Northland. I’d like to thank from the bottom of my heart the 11 lovely ladies that joined me on this quest to raise awareness of causes that are very dear to my heart #encephalitis and #acquiredbraininjury
That is a picture of my team, and my 3 handsome boys, crossing the finish line. The next race takes place in Blenheim in one month...eek! This week, I need to focus on having my brain recover and recharge from this huge event. I'm expecting that this might take anywhere from 4 to 7 days...hopefully not more than that!
With 5 weeks to go before the first of 2 Spirited Women races , our team has been cranking up the training a bit.
This weekend we participated to a local event regatta (Snake Bank Challenge) where we managed to test our kayaking skills. Great lessons learnt there and lots of laughs too. Then we did a combo run-bike full of hills. This one was hard work that's for sure but again very worthwhile training to get under the belt.
We are hoping to do The Encephalitis Society proud over those events so we can expect a few more hard training sessions ahead.
Please please please show the 12 ladies representing The Encephalitis Society your support by donating generously to our Weird Wonderful Brain fundraiser.
SO SO proud to be revealing Weird Wonderful Brain’s logo. It’s an idea that I’ve been nurturing for a while and, lucky me, I have a very clever graphic designer friend Catherine Forman which understood my very poor looking drawing of what I had in mind, embellished it hundred-fold and gave it the additional flair that it deserved.
The idea was to have a darker brain background to highlight the additional challenges that come hand in hand with living with an acquired brain injury following encephalitis. Life is definitely not as easy and straightforward as it used to be anymore, but saying that it is fully dark would also have been wrong...hence the addition of colourful flowers slowly blooming within that Weird Wonderful Brain of mine. Surviving brain injury is also rediscovering myself, the good & the bad, the pretty & the not so pretty. I wanted to make sure that this aspect was captured in my logo as although everyone is affected differently, there is a common aspect that all brain injury survivors have to navigate and it is accepting the “new me”.
Being an encephalitis survivor has launched me in a new direction and I’m glad to be surrounded by people who support in each of my endeavours, whatever those might be.
Catherine, thank you for your awesome generosity in working with me on this logo. I know you are a very busy lady with your new venture as well but I don’t think I could have trust anyone else to bring this idea of mine to life.
Another little win on this crazy journey!
There are very exciting few weeks ahead for the teams helping raise awareness of this rare brain inflammation illness called Encephalitis.
The first Spirited Women All Women Adventure Race will take place in Whangarei and with the latest newsletter featuring team 246 (which was our team) it's making us want to work extra hard on getting the fundraising efforts going too.
I'd love to invite you to make a contribution and share on your social media in the hope of reaching our fundraising target. Twelve beautiful and strong women (inside and out) will be representing The Encephalitis Society on March 12th-14th so we'd be very grateful for all the support.
Lots of love, Veronique
I was doing pretty well training wise prior to Xmas, but a health set back at Xmas means that my Weird Wonderful Brain has been struggling to get back on par with my “new normal”. Energy is scare and brain power even more of a rarity these days 🙄.
Some of my lovely team mates were part taking to a 3km fundraiser ocean swim on Jan 3rd and although I would have loved to join them in the ocean, I knew it would simply be too much for me. I’m an ok swimmer, but my past triathlons experiences revealed that swimming isn’t my strength so pulling a 3km out of a hat with no training and a weaken body and mind wasn’t an option. The event however had a 10km fundraiser run too which I know could fit in my bucket, so I decided to tag along and tick this part of the challenge instead. 🏊🏼♀️🏃🏽♀️
The girls did a truly fantastic job with their long ocean swim. I was so SO impressed by them all. I’m keen to add a swim like that to my bucket list for when I’ll be feeling better as they have inspired me so much! Of my end, I ticked the 10km run and crossed the finish line with a timing I was happy with given the current state of my body and mind. Sometimes it’s all about setting realistic expectations. ✅
If you haven’t already, I’d love to invite you to donate to my Weird Wonderful Brain fundraiser for the benefit of The Encephalitis Society and I would love it if you could share to you personal page to help raise awareness of this illness 🧠
Thanking you in advance for your support! 💕
I FINALLY got around to taking my old mountain bike out for a ride. Good to see it got a bit dirty from a ride off the beaten track...but gosh, it sure does need a good tuning (stuck gears, unusable low gears, crackly noises). It definitely needs more than just air in the tires. I might have left the last maintenance check a bit too long! Never mind, better late than never.
Which brings me to my next point...if you haven't already, make sure to give generously and support our Weird Wonderful Brain fundraiser for the benefit of The Encephalitis Society. A cause very dear to my heart.
Every little bit helps!
Just a few months to go before the first of 2 adventure race for the benefit of The Encephalitis Society. Please help us reach our fundraising goal by making a generous donation and share this give a little page.
When you part take to a Spirited Women Adventure race you can be certain of one thing...there will be hills to climb. It’s pretty flat in our neighbourhood so prepping your calves and thighs for those hills isn’t that easy. Luckily, there is an awesome staircase right by the beach though!!!
I have a love and hate relationship with that staircase but it is such a good workout!!
Thanks for all the donations received yet 💕
Thanks for all the lovely donations over the last few weeks. The first $500 milestone has now been reached. Onwards and upwards! Really proud of some of our team members. Some of them aren’t runners, but they are already cranking on their distances and achieving great paces. I think we will have 2 very competitive teams representing The Encephalitis Society 💕
Please help us achieve our fundraising goal by sharing my Give a Little page 🤗
In their autumn 2020 newsletter, The Encephalitis Society has promoted some of the fundraising efforts that are taking place for the benefit of their charity. How cool to see them supporting our Weird Wonderful Brain efforts!
The donating page will remain open for a little while longer, but there’s no time like the present.
Thanks for your support!
After a few months on the sideline due to migraines that come and go, I've finally been brave enough to put my running shoes back on. Encephalitis or not, I LOVE running...always have, always will! It was GREAT to see that my base fitness was still hiding in there. Thanks to my lovely team mate Kaz for getting me out there and running those few clicks with me. Such cool supporting team mates I have.
Thanks for the ongoing donations for this very important charity, Vero
We are off to a good start. Thanks for backing our wonderful team in raising funds for The Encephalitis Society 🧠💕
