Jump All Over Cancer: The One-Minute Challenge with Rope4Hope

Dizzy Skips (00:45)
Well, look at this crew! We’ve got Mandy, Natalie, and Jump Rope Coach Chris here to all talk about Cancer Research UK and the Rope4Hope event. We’ve got some exciting updates, right Mandy?

Mandy Shaw (00:55)
We sure have, I’ve got jaw ache just from talking about them all. Well straight off the bat, I’m very excited to share that the lovely Chris has decided to jump in and collaborate with us and help us to actually bring this event to life and give it the kudos that it deserves.

Big round of applause and thank you for Jump Rope Chris for joining the Mad Hatter team of Rope4Hope. He’s going to tell us a little bit more about how he’s jumping in and supporting us all. Another thing to share is that the event time has changed. We had started to promote that we were going to do the event at 11 o’clock in the morning on Saturday, the 13th of September.

Dizzy Skips (01:18)
Nice. Yay.

Coach Chris (01:24)
you

Mandy Shaw (01:42)
to allow people to travel to our new base venue, which again, want to tell you a little bit more about that in a minute. We’ve changed the event time to one o’clock. So that’s big news that everybody needs to cross off 11 o’clock and put one o’clock in their diary. The other thing that we’ve changed quite significantly is that we no longer have to skip for three minutes. Yay, I hear everybody’s there. Woohoo.

Dizzy Skips (02:05)
You

Natalie Ofkants (02:06)
the

Mandy Shaw (02:07)
because

we did decide that that was maybe a bit challenging, even though we knew we could stop and have a little two second rest if we needed to. Actually, we want to make this as inclusive as possible from beginners to pros and everybody else in between. So again, actually, with a little bit of a push from our Chris, we’ve decided to go for one minute. One minute at one o’clock.

Dizzy Skips (02:32)
That’s great.

Mandy Shaw (02:34)
on Saturday the 13th of September so that makes a bit more achievable, bit more inclusive. We can’t confirm the venue yet, we’ve just got to wait for an exchange of a few emails to confirm everything, but it’s going to be a London venue so that gives time for people to travel and actually quite a lot of us in the skipping community we used to go into

Dizzy Skips (02:49)
Okay.

Mandy Shaw (02:57)
Chris’s meetups in London and other venues that, know, other organizations that hold events and meetups in London. So it’s a London venue. And in the lead up to handing the jump rope over to Chris, we are going to have a raffle and some incentives leading up to the big day. So hopefully you’ve picked up on all that and haven’t jabbered on too quickly, but. ⁓

Dizzy Skips (03:18)
Exciting.

Natalie Ofkants (03:23)
it.

Dizzy Skips (03:23)
No,

no.

Mandy Shaw (03:25)
It’s so exciting, it’s all literally happened in the last week and Natalie and I went yay!

Natalie Ofkants (03:30)
We certainly did.

Dizzy Skips (03:31)
That’s terrific. So I have a quick question

for you. So you now have a central venue, but when we spoke last time, Mandy, there was also going to be a Zoom component where people could join in from anywhere around the world. That’s still happening. Great. So Dizzy can still skip with you at five in the morning or actually now it’ll be seven in the morning, I guess, right? you’re so kind. Thank you. You’re so kind.

Mandy Shaw (03:41)
Absolutely.

Absolutely that’s still happening. so even that. Yes. Yes, we were thinking of you as well, dizzy, you know, we didn’t when you get it up in the middle of the night. So, yeah, that

Coach Chris (03:52)
Hey!

Natalie Ofkants (03:53)
Yeah.

Mandy Shaw (03:59)
is an absolutely integral and very important part of the event to be, like I said, as inclusive as possible. We’re going to have a set number of availability at base camp, if you like.

But then literally anybody from anywhere in the country, in Europe, across the world, anybody that is willing to join in and jump in and jump all over cancer for one minute, they can all join in via the Zoom link that we will send out to them. Absolutely.

Dizzy Skips (04:28)
Like who doesn’t have one minute to jump for cancer research, right? Like we can do this.

Natalie Ofkants (04:31)
Second.

Coach Chris (04:31)
Exactly.

Mandy Shaw (04:32)
Come on,

tell me about it. ⁓

Natalie Ofkants (04:34)
Yes.

Mandy Shaw (04:35)
So Chris, do you want to fill everybody in on the raffle and the hashtag idea and things like that, music, all these?

Coach Chris (04:41)
Yeah, so

as you explained, we’ve switched it around, so it’s going to be one minute of skipping. And to try and keep things kind of roughly in line with the way the Guinness World Record is intended to be done, we’re going to try and do that as single bounce, so two feet together. And so to help people prepare between now and the date of the event,

Mandy Shaw (05:00)
Absolutely,

Coach Chris (05:08)
We’re going to be doing an online kind of challenge with a raffle attached to it. So the idea is called show us your minute. And there’s going to be a hashtag where they call one for one. And the idea is that we’ve got a song that we’re going to use on the day. And it’s the song that’s going to be part of the challenge called “Move Your Feet” You know the song?

Dizzy Skips (05:18)
Nice.

Natalie Ofkants (05:28)
Definitely.

Dizzy Skips (05:28)
I

Coach Chris (05:29)
And we’re

Dizzy Skips (05:29)
think so?

Coach Chris (05:30)
gonna make it so that you have to try and show us your minute of jumping to that music. And then you share it and you post about it online so that we can kind of spread the word as wide and as far as possible with as many people that this is an event we’re doing. Then you can like, you know, as Mandy said, you can join ⁓ online via Zoom or if you can make it to the venue, then we have space for everyone to jump together at 1pm for one minute, one for one.

Dizzy Skips (05:43)
Cool.

Natalie Ofkants (05:57)
Thank you.

Coach Chris (05:58)
And

Dizzy Skips (05:58)
That’s awesome.

Coach Chris (05:58)
so that’s the kind of the challenge we’re going to do in the lead up. And like shortly after or immediately after the event has closed and finished, we’ll announce some winners that will be picked randomly from everyone who’s taken part in the challenge. If you’ve used the hashtag, you’ve done your minute, then you’ll be entered into the draw to receive some prizes for your help, your contribution to sharing the message.

taking part in jumping on and stamping out cancer.

Dizzy Skips (06:29)
That’s awesome. I can just imagine this tidal wave of reels going out over Instagram all with the same one minute of music and people getting us hyped for Rope4Hope.

Coach Chris (06:36)
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Shaw (06:39)
Yeah, yeah, that’s what we’re feeling. You know, we want as many people to show up, to show us their minute and, you know, click through, raise some money for cancer research and, you know, prepare us for Rope4Hope 2026. Come on, let’s use it as a springboard to something even bigger in 12 months time. That would be WOW!

Coach Chris (06:39)
Y’all.

Natalie Ofkants (06:40)
Exactly.

Dizzy Skips (06:58)
Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah,

Natalie Ofkants (07:05)
And the nice thing is

Dizzy Skips (07:05)
that’s terrific.

Natalie Ofkants (07:06)
you don’t have to be, you you can trip as long as you get back straight back into it, you know, just, you know, it’s so inclusive that for those of us who are novice skippers and have just picked up the rope again after sort of 40, 50 years of non-skipping, we can all take part and we can all, you know, get the benefits from it. So perfect.

Dizzy Skips (07:27)
Yeah.

That’s terrific.

Coach Chris (07:30)
Yeah, so basic,

basic jumps. like I said, you can trip, but you just carry on going. And that’s kind of the good thing about having the challenge, the raffle, because it incentivize people to take part, give it a try. Obviously we’re not expecting people to do a whole minute on their first attempt, you know, but they have the whole six weeks, the five weeks to build up to it and post and practice. Venue will be open from about mid-day.

So if people arrive before the 1pm time slot, then they have chance and opportunity to practice at the venue as well. It will be a sprung kind of wooden floor. So that should be quite a comfortable jumping surface, which is nice. So yeah, it’s going to be good. It’s going to be inclusive, accessible, and it’s going to be great. It’s going to be fun. I’m looking forward to seeing how many people kind of jump in on this pun intended.

Dizzy Skips (08:12)
Nice.

Mandy Shaw (08:25)
Yeah absolutely,

very excited.

Dizzy Skips (08:26)
Yeah, yeah, me too.

I checked my giving page on the Rope4Hope site and I need to do a better job of promoting it, because right now I’ve still just got the one donation, which was my own, but yeah. Yeah.

Mandy Shaw (08:39)
Yeah, ditto, ditto. But now we’ve got a venue, you see. Now we’ve got something

solid. We know the timing. We know the place. Now we can spread the word vehemently like we’ve never been able to before. And I think that’s going to make a huge difference to the numbers that sign up, the amount of money we can raise, and just the overall success for everybody.

Dizzy Skips (08:46)
Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s right.

Yeah, I’m excited.

Mandy Shaw (09:01)
Yay! And don’t forget the

motto, “Our nation, your rope, their hope.” And that’s the whole thing, just in one sentence, six words.

Coach Chris (09:09)
Yes.

Dizzy Skips (09:09)
I love it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I love it. I love that motto. And I love how inclusive it is. Like honestly, it means a lot to me that I can participate from over here in the US, you know, because it doesn’t matter where, like cancer affects us all. doesn’t matter where you are in the world. Like if I can make a contribution of some sort from where I’m at and for goodness sake, a minute, like seriously.

Natalie Ofkants (09:26)
it.

Dizzy Skips (09:35)
people listening, you got a minute! Like join up, raise the little money, like help with cancer research. We can do this.

Mandy Shaw (09:35)
Yep.

Natalie Ofkants (09:39)
.

Mandy Shaw (09:42)
Yeah, absolutely.

Natalie Ofkants (09:43)
And the fact that we can do it from home, those of us that can’t get to the venue, we can do it from anywhere, in your back garden, in your living room, in your kitchen, wherever you’ve got physical space to wield the rope and just go for it. You’re gonna need to make sure you’ve got an internet connection, dial in and join in and just join the fun and raise money for such a worthwhile cause.

Dizzy Skips (09:44)
Sorry, Natalie.

Right. Right.

Natalie Ofkants (10:06)
it’s not just saving lives, preventing further cancer rates going up. So it’s going to be wonderful.

Dizzy Skips (10:06)
Absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So Mandy, for people who are interested and they want to keep updated hopefully they tune into the podcast for any updates, where should they sign up with an email somewhere? Where do they get updates so that they get the Zoom link? They know where to go.

Mandy Shaw (10:30)
Okay, well that is being finalized at the moment because we’re hoping that some of Chris’s clever wizardry is going to make the official sign up process really easy. However, in the meanwhile, you can contact me directly and get on our mailing list. Simply type in contact@rope4hope.com. That’s the email address.

Dizzy Skips (10:34)
Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Mandy Shaw (10:55)
send me a message, I’ll put you on the mailing list and you’ll be completely updated every time we send out a newsletter. There is a Facebook page, I need to get better at updating it but you can go on the Facebook page as well, just simply type in Rope4Hope and that will come up. So there’s two easy ways you can keep in touch.

Dizzy Skips (11:10)
Okay.

Great, and I’ll put that in our show notes as well so that people can just visit and click over and send you an email and make sure they’re on the list.

Mandy Shaw (11:20)
Yeah, of course. there’s also still

obviously the Rope4Hope website, ropeforhope.com. So we will be updating that over the next few days, especially once we’ve got the venue completely firmed up. So, yeah.

Dizzy Skips (11:27)
Right.

Yeah, and for

those who didn’t see it, I think in the last episode where Mandy and I talked about Rope4Hope, we kind of went through how to sign up and make your own giving page. So I’ll put a link in the show notes for that too, for those of you who need a little walkthrough or want to see how it works. Because it’s actually not that hard. It’s kind of fun. And you can even upload a little video. I made a little video about why I’m participating, and I was able to put that on my page. It was fun.

Mandy Shaw (11:49)
Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, no, your page is brilliant. Mine is not so because I’m just not that tech savvy. So mine just says Mandy’s house, Rope4Hope page or something.

Dizzy Skips (12:07)
Yeah, that’s good. Well, you’re doing lots

of stuff for this event and I really appreciate it. And Cancer Research UK has found a gem in all of you driving this effort forward. So, sorry.

Mandy Shaw (12:18)
Yeah, yeah, thank you. Yeah, it’s been

a bit like walking through treacle, but I feel the stickiness is getting less and less and less and less. So we’re really excited at where this is going to where this is going to end up.

Dizzy Skips (12:32)
Yeah, and look at your team and what you’ll learn from this year, you’ll apply to next year and it’ll be even better in 2026.

Natalie Ofkants (12:37)
Yeah.

a real springboard to next year, hopefully for the world record next year.

Mandy Shaw (12:39)
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

Dizzy Skips (12:43)
Yeah.

Mandy Shaw (12:45)
Yes.

Dizzy Skips (12:45)
Yeah. Great. Well, anything else that you want to add? Anything else we should know?

Mandy Shaw (12:53)
Now we’ve talked about the music, we’ve talked about the online competition, show us your minute, we’re going to have that’s a way to enter the raffle and we’ll be releasing details about those prizes over the coming weeks. We’re going to advise you of the venue as soon as that’s firmed up, but it’s definitely a London venue. The duration is one minute at one o’clock and we have the lovely Chris on board. Those are the highlights.

Dizzy Skips (13:19)
Yeah.

Well again, thank you all for doing this, for putting in the time for this. It’s such a great cause and I’m so excited to see it succeed here and so excited to be able to take part. And thank you for giving me a little extra sleep that morning so I don’t have to wake up at 5 a.m.

Natalie Ofkants (13:32)
No.

Mandy Shaw (13:32)
Yes. ⁓

Coach Chris (13:35)
you

Dizzy Skips (13:35)
That’ll be wonderful.

Mandy Shaw (13:37)
absolute pleasure, always.

Dizzy Skips (13:39)
All right, well, let’s kill it. Or not kill it, right? Let’s cure it.

Natalie Ofkants (13:40)
indeed. I’m not very good.

Mandy Shaw (13:41)
Hey!

Coach Chris (13:43)
you

Mandy Shaw (13:43)
Yes, let’s cure it. That’ll be even better.