You might believe – quite correctly – that 2018 saw the final charge of the Running Stormtrooper in ‘The Last Stormtrooper Run’. An incredible £36,676.83 raised, valiantly ending at Pinewood Studios but that’s not the end of the story and 2020 will see ‘The Rise of Stormtrooper’ as Jez Allinson dusts off the armour and once again hits the road aiming to raise a mammoth £100,000.
From May to November I’d been mulling things over regarding dusting off the suit again. Over this time period I’d noticed that a lot of my friends were asking me if I had any plans to do more. At this time I’d also started reading some articles and blogs from Make-A-Wish, so I started to come up with an idea. Run once again for both Make-A-Wish and Spread-A-Smile, however I’d mix it up a bit: rather than have one big event I’d set a through year challenge to maximise the results. In my head I was already setting a target of running 1000 miles in the costume. Yes 1000 miles!
I had some serious doubts though: concerns that some people would be tired of my fundraising. What if I failed to hit the fundraising target or the mileage target?
If you don’t mind I’ll use a movie analogy here: I really like the Rocky movies, however in my opinion they should have stopped at Rocky IV. The movie was brilliant, however after Rocky IV the series felt tired and uninspiring. I was worried that any future Running Stormtrooper efforts might be my Rocky V! To satisfy my doubts I emailed a few people within the Star Wars fandom community whose opinion I respected. I explained that up until this point the project had raised nearly £37,000 and I thought it would be nice to try to raise a specific amount in order to get the Running Stormtrooper to reach £50,000. I explained the situation and went into detail regarding the plan in my head and my worries about failing to hit the new target (for the first time).
I will spare you the in depth details of the 1000 mile breakdown and I’ll keep it simple at this stage:
1000 miles from 1st January to 31st December 2020 (more details in a future blog)
A total Running Stormtrooper project target of £100,000 (within this I have included the £36,676.83 which has been raised from 2016-2018)
