Two friends who met at secondary school took part in the London to Brighton walk for the Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity last month.
Alex Chapman and Robert Riches, both 38, completed the 62 mile walk (100km) in 21 hours whilst raising over £1,400 in six weeks of fundraising.
The walk was Alex’s second attempt so he was delighted with finishing.
He said: “We completed it in 21 hours of walking but the overall time including stops and breaks was 30 hours and 19 minutes. We was excited to finish but more relieved.
“The last 10k was the hardest, our bodies were giving up, legs were swelling and it was mentally tough. I would say the last 10k was harder than the first 90k.”
Alex talked about how completing the walk was a personal achievement but it felt amazing to give back to the hospital which does “amazing work”.
“My wife is a nurse and my sister in law is a nursery nurse at the children’s ward there so it was a no brainer to raise money for the hospital. It feels good to raise money to help the hospital with all the amazing research they do there,” said Alex.
Robert said the children who are going to benefit from the money raised was getting him through the pain.
He said: “It is amazing to do stuff for kids. When kids get ill they haven’t really had a life yet so we wanted to make their lives better. It kept me going when I was going through my tough moments because you know a weeks’ worth of pain is nothing to compare what they go through.
Both Alex and Rob aren’t planning on stopping there as they are already setting their eyes on charity runs in the future and are looking at doing the 100k walk again next year.
He said: “We want to continue and do a bit more for other causes. We are looking at a couple of 10k runs which are coming up and there are friends and family members who are hopefully joining us.”
The St Albans friends are looking at creating a fundraising team so they can regularly take part and recognise charities.
0 Comments