Josh’s 2.6 Challenge

When the news broke that the London Marathon was being postponed until October, I was heartbroken. Our amazing team of runners had put so much effort into training for the race and fundraising for the charity, I felt so bad that they were having to wait to realise their dream of running the famous race and that they would need to re-start their training programs later in the year.

The decision to postpone was, of course, the correct decision, one which we fully support, but that doesn’t dampen the disappointment for myself or Team PCR. I spent weeks trying to figure out what I could do on the 26th April, with the runners, to boost morale and to highlight the fact that, even though the marathon was not taking place that day, we were still a team.

Enter the 2.6 Challenge!

The organisers of the London Marathon, along with other mass participation sports events organisers, created the 2.6 Challenge to help the UK’s charities. From 26th April, the public would be asked to do an activity involving the numbers 2.6 or 26 and raise money for a chosen charity. I thought this would be a great thing for our team to do together and I started brainstorming about what challenge I could do to take part and finally decided to run 26 laps of my flat block’s car park.

I reached out to Team PCR and asked them to come up with their own challenge and take part with me. The event was set and now all I needed to do was wake up on the 26th and actually run the 26 laps!

I woke up Sunday morning, kind of regretting agreeing to run 26 laps of the car park – why couldn’t I have said I would do 2.6 minutes of walking or something like that?! But I was running for a good cause and for a great team so I got ready and headed down to the car park to start my laps. My fiance captured the whole thing on video and took some snaps, like the one to the right, and once it was all done I sent the videos to Team PCR, thanking them for their support and that I was looking forward to supporting them towards the October marathon.

Members of the team then started sharing what they had done for the 2.6 Challenge and told me that they were looking forward to smashing the marathon in October. It made me so happy and I am so grateful for their support of the charity. They all had their own little twist on the challenge and it was amazing, some examples of what happened:

• Joel ran up a hill 26 times which ended up being a half marathon.
• Emie walked 26,200 steps
• Sarah ran 2.6 miles and rallied her friends and family to get involved and they did everything from swimming 26 lengths to taking the dog for a 26 minute walk.
• Sergio and Chris ran 26km each.
• Claire ran up a hill 26 times whilst her kids did 26 jumps.