£444 was raised for Watford based charity Herts Inclusive Theatre on Sunday, when director, Caroline Stevens and her family joined in with the nationwide 2.6 challenge.
The challenge was organised to support charities on what would have been the day of the London Marathon.
Although the theatre company had no place in the marathon this year, Caroline and her family thought it was a good opportunity to take part in the event to raise vital funds for this small charity currently in crisis.
Caroline’s husband, Kelly Stevens took the opportunity to run his first ‘non-organised’ marathon. Having completed over 40 marathons already, this was the first Kelly had to undertake using his own initiative.
Kelly said “The first marathon distance I have ever run just for the sake of it. No crowds, no aid stations, no medal. Physically it wasn’t too bad, but mentally it’s tough to keep going without supporters along the route”.
Kelly managed to achieve the marathon running from Bushey through Garston up to Hemel Hempstead and back, avoiding anyone he came across and coming in under four hours for the first time in a few years.
Caroline and five-year-old daughter Holly, then joined Kelly at their local park in Bushey for his final few metres.
Holly and Caroline then ran together for one lap of the park, which lasted for five minutes, twice the length of the challenge Holly had set herself to run for 2.6 minutes.
Caroline then went on to run six laps of the park and completed her challenge of 26 minutes of running.
The money will go towards setting up an online musical production for disabled and disadvantaged people in the local area.
Open to all abilities to take part in the charity aims to produce this in the next month with a world premiere at the beginning of June.
Before the COVID-19 situation, Herts Inclusive Theatre, were running 14 weekly arts based activities, holiday activities, productions and events in South West Hertfordshire and North London.
As the crisis unfolded the charity initially faced complete closure.
So far £27,000 has been raised to keep the charity running, and they have managed to launch a programme of weekly drama and yoga activities with support from grants including the Watford’s Mayor’s Emergency Fund.
The programme is a mixture of closed sessions for children, young people and adults of all abilities.
Pre-recorded daily activities released daily via the organisations social media and a weekly half hour Saturday morning live session via their YouTube channel.
The charity hopes these sessions will help to bring fun, skills and friendship to participants who are now even more isolated than ever before.
They will also be working hard to raise funds to continue venue based activities when this is all over, and to support participants to integrate back into the community, supporting their mental and physical wellbeing.
The family’s fundraising page is still open for donations uk.virginmoneygiving.com/CarolineStevens
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