Minister's Marathon Year

Tuesday February 3

A Church of Scotland minister has set himself the challenge of running a marathon every month throughout 2015

The Rev Barry Hughes is running in aid of the Peebles branch of the MS Society. He began with the Liverbird marathon in Liverpool on New Year’s Day (pictured above after finishing), and will take in various parts of Scotland, England and Luxembourg before finishing where he started, in Liverpool, on Hogmanay.

Barry, who is an Ordained Local Minister in the Presbytery of Melrose and Peebles, said: “I have been running marathons for a couple of years, including the London marathon last year.

“In October, I was planning next year with the two people who I run with, and I realised that for the first four months I had one every month. So I did a bit of googling and realised that doing one every month wasn’t going to be logistically too difficult.

"The other challenge was to try and do them on a day other than Sunday - for obvious reasons - which I didn't quite manage, but I got 11.

"I'm doing mostly smaller more local marathons - they are more fun. In Liverpool I think there were about 80 people running. You get a lot of camaraderie with that number of people."

Among the highlights of the year will be running a 33-mile ultramarathon near Aberdeen in March – on his 50^th birthday – and in May he is running in Luxembourg at an event linked to an interfaith conference. “There’s a special category of entry for people who are ordained ministers!”

Then in August he has planned an unofficial marathon route around the Peebles area, in conjunction with his local running club.

The decision to run for the MS Society came because of a family connection with multiple sclerosis, and knowing ‘quite a few’ people locally with MS. He says he is ‘blown away’ to have already raised nearly £3000.

You can donate and see updates of Barry’s progress at his Justgiving page.

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