You can’t have failed to hear about Phil Packer’s amazing challenge to complete the London Marathon over 13 days after being left paraplegic due to a rocket attack in Basra last year. We’ve followed his quest to raise £1 million pounds for Help for Heroes and were there to walk the last mile of his Marathon challenge with him on Saturday. It was amazing to see quite how many people came along on the day to cheer him on, hundreds of well wishers, family, friends and the royal military police were there lining the last hundred yards.
After Phil Packer was injured last year he was told he would never walk again, but he has defied medics by not only walking but also completing the 26.2 miles of the London Marathon. What is even more impressive is that he only re-learnt to walk with crutches a month before his marathon. We have all been so moved by Phil’s challenge that we just had to be there when he finished – cheering, taking photos and tweeting. We even managed to get an interview with him:
Interview with Phil Packer from JustGiving on Vimeo.
We met some lovely people such as Chloe, who gave up her job to help Phil’s campaign, Sir Steve Redgrave who presented Phil with his medal for completing the marathon, Angela Packer, Phil’s absolutely wonderful mother and many, many, more.
The response from the public has been fantastic and the amount that has been raised on his Justgiving page has been growing at a fantastic rate – every minute the amount on his page seems to go up my another thousand pounds or so. Just look at how his page has grown over the few weeks since he started his marathon walk.
Phil Packer is now just over £100k away from reaching his target – he is so focused on reaching his target amount for Help for Heroes that he has already set up his next challenge. Next month he will climb the 3,000ft vertical rock face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, requiring him to do 4,000 pull ups to reach the top.
Please visit his page and help him get to his target.
Tags: basra, El Capitan, Help for Heroes, London Marathon, Paraplegic, phil packer