Today, on Friday 21 May we are celebrating Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Day (SCIAD). This annual event is run by the Spinal Injuries Association, together with charity partners Aspire, Back Up and Spinal Research to raise awareness of spinal cord injury and highlight the challenges SCI people face on a daily basis.
This year’s theme is reflecting on the past year; a year where we experienced a global pandemic, and our world was changed irrevocably.
Our brain injury and spinal cord injury specialist solicitors recently took part in a fundraising event to benefit the funding of scientific research into spinal cord injury. Solicitor, Ellice Harding tells us more about it here;
The Wings for Life World Run took place on 8 May 2021. The premise? To run. And keep running.
The idea of the race is that participants all over the World start running at the same time, no matter where they are or what their local time is. Participants then run as far as they can, until they are caught by the virtual chaser car, at which point they are out.
Whilst large, organised races were not possible this year due to Covid-19 restrictions, the event was still a great success via the app, raising over €4.1million for spinal cord research. Anu Manda and I both took part, along with over 184,000 participants from 151 countries across the globe and together we ran over 20km. Whilst we both set off thinking we were going for a leisurely Sunday jog around the park, we found the support from the app, celebrating every kilometre and urging us to keep going, and the ominous reminders that the chaser car that they were on our tails spurred us on, and were pushed further than we expected. We’ll definitely be taking part again next year, and with the winner of the women’s race running a total of 60.1km, we certainly have something to train and aim for!
Wings for Life is a not-for-profit spinal cord research foundation established by the Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz and the two-time motocross world champion Heinz Kinigadner. They fund research and clinical trials aimed at finding a cure for spinal cord injury. Anu and I work as specialist catastrophic injury solicitors at Hugh James and represent many clients who have sustained spinal cord injuries. Seeing what an impact such an injury has on a person’s life, and on the lives of their family and friends, we are acutely aware of how important Wings for Life’s work is.
If you’d like to sponsor us it’s not too late, and you can do so by clicking on this link. There you’ll also find more information about Wings for Life, and details of the 2022 World Run, so that you can get involved too!
For further information or advice, visit our Spinal Injury page.