My Identity
At midnight on Saturday, 19 November last year, most of us were fast asleep or partying. Not so for Connor Allnut. The 26-year-old electrician from Timaru was exactly halfway through his 24-hour fundraiser for Sneaker Friday.
24-HOUR MOVER
F
or Diabetes Action Month, Connor Allnut, ran, cycled, long-boarded, scootered and walked his way around Christchurch’s Hagley Park, over 24 hours. In that time, he raised just over $7000 through both his Givealittle page and in-person donations. The funds raised will go towards the 2023 Family Camp, ensuring it is affordable for all our families to attend. ‘It felt like a good way to raise money and to get kids out on their bikes and scooters or whatever they wanted to do. The main thing was to show kids with diabetes that they can still go out and do everything that their mates do.’ What kind of person decides to spend all that time relentlessly moving around a very large city park, all in the name of fundraising? The very same kind of person who volunteers as a teen mentor for Diabetes Canterbury Youth. Also the same kind of person who raised about $800 for Diabetes New Zealand though a Big Splash event in Timaru a few years earlier. Connor says the volunteering first came about when he felt there were a lot of diagnosed kids who would benefit from talking to someone who’s not a doctor or a dietitian. ‘Someone who has a good sense of what it’s like to live with type 1 diabetes.’ Connor was diagnosed with type 1 when he was 16. He remembers sitting outside the dairy with a huge chocolate milk, finishing it, being amazed at still feeling thirsty, then going back in to buy a
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DIABETES WELLNESS | Autumn 2023
juice. When he got home, he kept drinking. Luckily, this mum was a nurse and cottoned on. The next day, she told a doctor at the hospital she was working at, and he told her to bring Connor to the hospital immediately or they would call an ambulance to his school. PLANNING
Concentrated planning for the event started halfway through the year. He collated his thoughts and ideas on how the event should run and submitted it to Diabetes NZ, who of course thought it was a brilliant idea. Being a keen rugby, futsal, soccer, and AFL player, Connor was already super fit. He also goes to the gym a couple of times a week, so he says he didn’t feel he needed to do any extra training for the event. THE DAY
Connor originally had a set path planned, but some of the footpaths in the park were being resurfaced, so his laps was shortened for a number of reasons. Hagley Park covers a huge 165 hectares, and a loop is roughly seven kilometres, meaning it would take Connor an hour to complete. This would mean if he needed a snack or a drink, or if a supporter came to see him, they could be waiting a long time before he made it back to the gazebo HQ. The Christchurch spring provided some challenging weather. ‘There was very heavy rain, on and off, for the first 14 hours. It would stop for half an hour and we’d go, “sweet!” This is at one in the morning. Then it would start pissing down again.’
Connor came up with idea at the beginning of 2022. He says it felt like a good way to raise money, and he wanted to do something that kids could be part of, hence the bikes, boards and scooters.