By Lucia Caretti & Francesca Giannotti
For Andrew, this was the easiest marathon he has ever ran. “It was only me, with my thoughts and my music”. It’s a 42 meter route to repeat until infinity. “The atmosphere that we managed to create was amazing”, says Andrew as he describes this experience. Everybody from the neighborhood stood on their balconies to cheer for him and the Italian hospitals. Andrew Bannon, 41 years old, lives in Monaco and yesterday he ran 1000 laps of his garden to help La Fondazione La Stampa – Specchio dei tempi. He started to talk about his initiative on “Go Fund Me“, and now that he has actually achieved his goal the number of donations has escalated. He has reached 1800€ with the help of 57 friends.
“It’s been tough, I kept thinking about your medical and sanitary staff and about having the opportunity to raise money to support them and that helped” explains Bannon. Andrew is an Irish conference man in Germany. He is married and has a young daughter. He has travelled the world for his motivational speeches, he discovered running in Germany in 2003. After four months of training he was to run the Rome Marathon yesterday, which unfortunately didn’t take place due to the Coronavirus. This is where he realized: “Rome is where your heart is”, and started to measure the lane of his garden and started the calculations, drawing a route with the green, white and red cones, the red ones delineated the finish line. He did a parade lap and documented everything with pictures and a video.
Yesterday he wore his race shirt and took out his stop watch. Total time was of 4h35′, a great result given that his record has been 3h37′. All of the curves that made him go back and forth costed him an hour. “I admit it was not boring, I was concentrated on the numbers. I had to reach 100 rounds, then 250, then 500”. Small milestones for a greater result. “My mom was a nurse, she used to work night shifts, sleep three hours and then take care of the house. I have a huge respect for doctors and nurses. I would like to help the Italian population during this hard time”. The money raised will be turned into masks, gloves, and coats: Specchio dei tempi is delivering thousands of DPI materials to the medical structures and has bought dozens of machineries to help the Intensive Care and Reanimation units in Turin and Piedmont.
The subscription launched by the foundation has raised up to 7.6 million of euros thanks to the contribution of over 9 thousand donors. On specchiodeitempi.org/covid19 it is possible to keep sustaining the project and follow all of the news and updates. Specchio dei tempi is also receiving lots of support from abroad with over hundreds of donations from almost 60 different countries: starting from Germany with Andrew, to Spain, passing through Estonia, United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Austria, Norvegia and Denmark. This is why Andrew strongly believes that his 1000 laps have a meaning: “Europe is alive, we worry about our brothers and sisters”.
