Team Geared Up

SINGAPORE (Team Geared Up) - Julie McElroy is completing the Ben Nevis Challenge on 31st of May. How does this make TGU? Well… Julie was born with Cerebral Palsy and this is the first wheelchair team challenge to attempt to reach the top of Ben Nevis. Incredible!

The challenge is set for ten teams made up of corporate employees to pitch in and prepare to help wheelchair users climb Britain’s highest peak. The event is designed to raise funds and awareness for Capability Scotland and Scope.

Despite any physical challenges, Julie is not new to the outdoors! Her brother Charlie (Team TGU London Rat Race 08) fed me progress updates last year as Julie was 1 of 10 disabled teenagers selected for the Beyond Boundaries expedition led by ex-SAS commando Ken Hames in South America for the BBC.

Over a period of four weeks and 400km, we fought our way from the edge of the Amazon Basin, climbed up to over 5000m to reach the snowline on Cotopaxi, the highest an active volcano in the world, and then descended to sea level, wading through miles of swamp before reaching the Pacific Ocean. The TV series Beyond Boundaries : Across the Andes is still to be broadcast sometime in spring this year on BBC2.

What Julie doesn’t tell you here, is that she pushed another person in wheelchair the whole way. You just wait for this to come out on TV, you’ll be cheering them on.

Great news arrived this morning from her brother in New York this morning, BBC Scotland have given Julie her own blog on BBC.co.uk to document the challenge and her preparations for others.

Not only that! Julie has reached the finals of “Young Scots of Year” and TGU wish her the best of luck at the awards ceremony on March 20th!

-Robin.

(Image Credit: Julie’s Bebo, linked from BBC blog.)