Our Wonderful Iron Man

Sometimes people go that extra mile for IRR and David Scott-Miller is one of those. He and his wife, Alison, are brilliant fosterers and have been so for several years. They had wanted to help initially as a “thank you” for their first IRR girl Summer, who started it all, but then they found fostering, although often challenging, was also enjoyable and very rewarding.

His two beautiful IRR Golden Retrievers are Bonnie and Daisy.

Having been involved with several especially needy dogs over the years, Lottie’s plight really touched their hearts so, as if their mammoth fostering wasn’t enough, David felt he wanted to, again, give something back and decided an Ironman challenge in October 2017 was the way to go.

David told us, “The money was raised in stages with a 2 week gap between. When my son and wife set up the “just giving” page, I was informed we would be lucky to raise £200. so I sold some of my sports equipment to boost funs but, in the end, we raised a truely fabulous £2,571.

Thank you so much to everyone who donated. The generosity of people was amazing. Special thanks must go to Jackie Juffkins who gave us a lot of help raising the money”

Apart from the “just giving” page, through e-mails and texts, as many people as possible were made aware of what David was aiming to achieve. This included all 50 of the people who had adopted a Goldie fostered by them over the years.

Money steadily came in with donations also coming from Facebook friends and relatives and through the IRR Fosterers Facebook page as well as from Stanley House vets where Alison works and from the people with whom David trains.

On completion of the Ironman when people learnt David had not only finished the race but had won his age group, the donations came flooding in.

The IRONMAN triathlon took place in Italy, took 11 hours 38 minutes and consisted of:- a 2.4 mile swim in open water a 115-mile bike ride and running a marathon (26.2 miles)

None of this could have been achieved without months of hard work and rigorous training. 

In David’s longest training week he did 25 hours consisting of 18 thousand metres of swimming, 12 to 15 hours on the bike, 5 to 6 hours running and 2 or 3 one hour sessions in the gym. He considered 18 hours to be an easy week!

Not to be forgotten, there was also a very pleasurable 10 to 12 hours a week spent walking,

Bonnie and Daisy and various foster dogs too.

Everyone involved with IRR is in awe of our wonderful Ironman and thank him from the bottom of our hearts for what he has achieved.

WELL DONE, DAVID.