Monthly Vital Statistics - July

July has seen The Long Push make some amazing gains in all areas. Details follow, but here, with the most important figure first, are the stats for JULY :

CHARITY FUND TOTAL AT 31st JULY  -  £1687.69

TRAINING MILES COMPLETED IN JULY  -  82.5 miles

TOTAL MILES TRAINING TO DATE  -  359.70 miles

NUMBER OF VIEWS OF THIS BLOG at 31st JULY  - 6283

NUMBER OF FACEBOOK 'LIKES' at 31st JULY - 456

Like I said, some amazing gains in all areas. The charity fund itsself grew by £1332.69 during July. The biggest factor in this gain was the donations made to the Nationwide for The Long Push 2012 which came to a whopping £1112.70 alone! (See the thank you blog previously) But every penny counts so here are the other boosts to the charity fund in July:

• The 'Change-ing lives in July penny bottle donation campaign - £9.87 (Hopefully with some more of these donations still to come in

• Birkdale Primary School's 'mufty day' donation of £120.00 (Again, see the previous Thank You blog)

• Ailsa's school playground book sale which netted another £8.20

• SkateFurther's Laura Hatwell's auction of a set of her Seismic Speed Vent longboard wheels netteed another £37.50 for the charity fund. Thanks again for that Laura. :o)

• Any outstanding donations of cash handed to me all got put on the Just Giving page on the 31st July.

Really, this is just awesome stuff! Irrespective of the £5000 fihgure I plucked out of thin air when I first started this project, I NEVER expected to raise this much money and I'm sure Carol from Families Connected didn't either. I know The Long Push has opened her eyes into a world she never knew existed and that's something I'm glad to share with all the non-skaters who may be reading this blog. Skateboarding + Charity = WIN and especially when we are talking about long distance skating.

I managed to get 45.3 miles more training in during July than I did in June, which is good, but I ended the month with an injury in a fall in Blackpool. So now recovery is my main goal. Still, I've covered over 359 miles in training so far. By the time I'm finished it could be up to 500 miles this year. Something I've never achieved on a skateboard in any year before now. But I'm toying with a very ambitious project for next year. Hmmmm.....

Views of this blog rose by 1251 views to reach 6283. So someone is looking at it!! This is one figure that I hope will assist me in gaining more product sponsors for 2013. I'm hopefull that whatever journey I decide on will capture their imaginations and they will want to be part of it. Fingers crossed.

Finally, Facebook likes shot up over the 400 mark to get to 456, a rise of 74 since last month. The target is 500 before I set off on my journey, so please, keep sharing and I'll have to do a bit of Facebook wall spamming as well over the next week or so to try and generate some more myself. I think well make it though, you know?

And of course, thanks as ever, to THE LONG PUSH 2012 sponsors, www.bigwoodys.co.uk  www.uk.dcshoes-store.com  www.sporting-sails.com  www.orangatangwheels.com  www.jandrsports.co.uk  and to all who have donated and supported me in any way so far.

Full blog post from Monday's training journey between St. Annes and Fleetwood coming soon....

Chris