Marathon-running soldiers visit Herts

4 November 2010, 12:38 | Updated: 4 November 2010, 12:45

10 soldiers who are running 10 marathons in just 5 days passed through Hertfordshire today (Thursday November 4th).

The team, from 39 Engineer Regiment, arrived at Hemel Hempstead Sportspace at around 6am where they had a quick rest and some breakfast, and then met with MP Mike Penning and the Mayor of Dacourm.

It hasn’t exactly been easy for them though – the whole time they have been wearing combat boots instead of trainers, and have been carrying 40 pounds in their rucksack.

Sergeant Jon Offord organised the whole thing:

“I created the 10 Squaddies, 10 Marathons in 5 Days to support St Dunstan’s as we want to give something back to a charity that helps our fellow soldiers in difficult times. To keep it interesting I threw the idea of wearing our Bergen’s filled to weigh 40lbs, plus combat boots rather than trainers.

"I went for 10 Marathons in 5 Days as I couldn’t find a record that it had been done before; there were plenty of reports of 5 marathons in 10 days, or 10 in 10 days, but on-one seems to have done 10 marathons in 5 days. People have said that’s because its physically impossible but well prove them wrong.”

When asked how they trained for such a difficult challenge, Sergeant Offord told Heart:

“We’ve increased our training ten fold. Over the last 14 weeks we’ve put on miles and miles and miles of tabbing, and we’ve also doing marathons, half marathons the Cambridge half Marathon, Spinnaker Tower challenge and we’ve broken World record. Everyone in the team has done at least one marathon on the treadmill as a warm up.”

The team started in Sheffield on Monday and are expected to reach Brighton by 3pm on Friday.

 They're raising money for St Dunstans – a charity for blind ex servicemen and women.

For more information about the charity go to http://www.st-dunstans.org.uk/

Donations are welcome at http://www.justgiving.com/10squaddies