Three thousand, four hundred miles on a direct Continental Airways flight to New York to run or walk 26 or 13 miles puts it in perspective.
Edinburgh and Scotland are lucky to have this flight and global connectivity. Why don’t we in Inverness have a connection to our capital?
Half-way, the pilot called our attention to a spectacular sight to the right. A completely ice-free Greenland. What a sight underpinning global warming statistics. Our arrival in new York was spectacular, circling the city and marvelling at the skyscrapers protruding into the sky and between the city and hinterland housing a population of 8.5 million people - 25 per cent watching us on Sunday.
Our downtown hotel near Time Square housed the entire team - Lorna, Lorraine, Laura, Tony, Neil and Catriona and from this base we met the American Scottish Foundation which has taken ARCHIE under its wing this weekend, endorsing and hopefully contributing to our mission of raising money to improve the facilities at Raigmore’s children’s ward to match the excellent medical nursing and support care for our younger citizens.
In the late afternoon, we prepared for The Parade Of Nations in Central Park - a very cold Central Park but warmed by the reception we received from all nations relentlessly photographing our kilts. Venezuela, Japan, South Africa and Oz were all in good spirits.
A final barter with a steward persuaded him that while we marched in solidarity with the United Kingdom, we were a nation within the Union and we marched 10 feet behind with our own flags and all the Scottish recruits we enrolled from the crowd to help us. David Cunningham, our Chief Executive, and I led our country. A proud moment! Alex Salmond and David Cameron would have been proud of us!
Our American Scottish Foundation colleagues were excellent assistants during the day and the chairman Dougal Munro who operates a Harris Tweed mill even came to help us. He told us he was on his way to Scotland to visit his business but made sure he stayed to help us as he understood the ARCHIE Foundation’s aims in terms of the Raigmore Hospital Appeal.
On Saturday night, we visited the St Andrews Restaurant, a Scottish restaurant, just off Time Square and 53 people from the American Scottish Foundation and the ARCHIE Foundation both Inverness and Aberdeen were in attendance, with the ARCHIE marathon team being the guests of honour. The event was kindly sponsored by BP and its North American director attended in person which was a real boost.
However, following good practice the evening was curtailed to enable everyone to get a night’s sleep prior to the Sunday morning challenge.
Mornings in New York are crisp and cold at present and it was no different at 6am aiming for a 10am-ish start from Staten Island. However, express porridge and space food kept us quiet when queuing but on this occasion the queue was 40,000 people.
All our team achieved their objectives and between the silent auction and sponsorship, we raised £40,000 - plus the whole weekend for ARCHIE, including all 47 runners, made a total £180,000 between Grampian and Highland. This was an excellent result for both Grampian and the Highland appeal.
