Firstly, a huge thank you for your support toward the Smith Family and toward myself and the team to complete the increasingly difficult Smith Family Challenge! As I mentioned above, you are receiving this email as a result of your support toward the Smith Family, but for those of you that take some form of joy in the knowledge of how difficult this event was for us, I can assure you that this year you certainly got your money worth! The course this year made last years 100km seem like a walk in the park! Day 1 began with a brief overview of the course and a very serious warning that we should not be attempting the entire course for the day as it would have us covering 150km. On the morning of day 1, I was given the role of chief navigator for our team, however, this lasted for all of 2 hours when I missed a turn, resulting in being relegated to Team Safety Officer until further notice….. Not what I had in mind!! Day 2 had us all limping to the start line for another day of what we thought could only be the easier of the two days, however, when we found ourselves knee deep in a swamp, covered completely in mosquitos and carrying our kayaks (due to the mud being too thick to paddle through), we realised how wrong we were. Whilst we didn’t win the event this year, we had an amazing few days competing in the challenge! We returned home to base camp after day 2 completely broken, however, jogging through the finish line to see a dozen or more kids as well as numerous Families that benefit from the amazing work provided by the Smith Family, gave us all a clear understanding of exactly why we were putting ourselves through this gruelling challenge. Over all, the course this year proved incredibly tough and the team ended up covering around 130km over the two days – well above the 100km intended challenge distance. This took buckets of sweat, a little blood, possibly a few arguments and just a few tears, but in the end, a major part of what kept us going was the support from all of you assisting in the team raising $40,000, and the Challenge raising just over $1,000,000 for the Smith Family!! To all of you, we can’t thank you enough for your many emails of support and of course your generous donations. Kind Regards, Harry