World's Longest Ever Multiple Team Relay

In the quiet and friendly community of West End, seated around a table at the West End Inn, a small team of friends have been slowly plotting a challenge and recruiting willing volunteers to be a part of it. The idea is to demonstrate how an ordinary community can achieve the extraordinary by pulling together, thinking big and getting stuck in.

The challenge is for up to 12 relay teams to make a grueling record breaking attempt to complete 12 ironman distance events in 12 consecutive days, starting on the 17th March 2012: '12 in 12 in 12'. Each day participants will face the challenge of swimming 2.4 miles in open water, cycling a leg crunching 112 miles followed by a sapping 26.2 mile marathon. Each team will cover a huge 1,687.2 miles during the course of the 12 days with those participants doing multiple stages likely to only have 7 hours or less to recover between each day!

Each of the teams taking part represents a key sector of society. The teams will set off from London and follow a 1687.2 mile circuit that includes the five capital cities of the UK &Ireland. Their journey will be taking their Big Society Team Baton on a staggering 28.8 mile swim, 1344 mile cycle and 314.4 mile run from: London - Edinburgh - Belfast - Dublin - Cardiff - London.

At each capital city, they will collect a symbolic Olympic ring so that on returning to London they will have gathered our five Big Society Olympic Rings from across the UK & Ireland and deliver them, as a complete set, to the home of the 2012 Olympics.

Why?
Quite simply why not? It's the Olympic year, this has never been done before; and with charities in need of a boost, given the tough economic climate, what better excuse! Inspired by the Olympics coming to London and the incredible journey of the Olympic Torch the BIG SOCIETY RELAY is attempting to become the world's longest ever multiple team relay, right here in the UK & Ireland, celebrating the different sectors of our society and, in turn, their role in 'Big Society'.

The wider general public is invited to take up their own BIG SOCIETY '12 IN 12' CHALLENGE by making their own Big Society Representative Team and taking up the baton. Whether they are a club, society, school, university, company, charity, local community or friends we are registering teams of people across the UK & Ireland to take up their own imaginative '12 in 12' challenge for no other reason than to see if they can do it, raise funds for a cause close to their own heart, channel the whole Big Society concept into an inspiring shared adventure and kick start this amazing olympic year.

Challenges could take any form, (all easily achievable if done as a team) eg:

• to cover the same cumulative 1687.2 mile distance in 12 days
• to row or swim 12 miles each day for 12 days
• to play 12 rounds of golf each day for 12 days
• to complete 12 olympic distance triathlons per day for 12 days
• to cycle the distance to London 12 times in 12 days
• to run 12 marathons in 12 days
• or even to eat 12 carrots every day for 12 days!

Whatever imaginative '12 in 12' team challenge created, and whatever their inspiration, you can follow it all as momentum builds and a multitude of teams and exciting challenges emerge. Get to know the stories behind the teams and individuals, training tips, routes, and much more. Just let us know how you want to be involved and between us let's make this happen and see how many multiples of £121,212 we can inspire our very own Big Society to raise:

£121,212 x ?

With so many challenges out there focussed on individual achievement we want to do something where the huge individual efforts of ordinary people are combined to achieve something far greater and monumentally extra-ordinary. This is about all manner of different people coming together, challenging themselves, inspiring others and, between us all, doing our bit to help those whom we feel deserve it most.