Falkirk flat mates' marathon effort for mental health charity

Sarah Hutton and Kayleigh McMahon, who share a flat in The Maltings, Falkirk realised they had possibly bitten off more than they could chew when they started to

look into the details of the Goggins Challenge.

Maybe the run being inspired by ex-Navy Seal and ultra-running fanatic David Goggins was a clue – and the fact it required the pals to run four miles every four

hours in the span of two days.

Sarah said: “It was tough – a lot tougher than we both thought it was going to be. We wanted to do something that was really challenging for us and the people who

supported us knew it would be a real challenge for us.

"We’re not runners and we were a little bit naive at the beginning of it. The more we read about it we realised it’s actually almost two marathons in two days and the

most we’ve ever run before was a half marathon and 10Ks."

Before the final challenge Sarah and Kayleigh had been observing Lent a little differently.

Sarah said: "Instead of giving things up for Lent, we decided to see if we could give something to someone else every day. We gave to food banks and that kind of thing

and then in the last week of Lent we decided to do the Goggins Challenge.”

The flat mates wanted to raise money for a worthy charity and picked the Scottish Association of Mental Health (SAMH).

"We wanted it to be a charity that can help everyone,” said Sarah. “And with people being stuck inside for so long during the lockdown we thought mental health would

be the most relevant charity.”

Scotland’s national mental health charity, SAMH, works in over 60 communities, helping adults and young people through the provision of mental health social care

support.

“We initially thought we would raise £200 for SAMH,” said Sarah. “But we ended up raising £1500. We just want to thank everyone for supporting us – we genuinely wouldn’t have completed the challenge if it hadn’t been for them.”