Hi everyone,

The Benstead boys are both running the London Marathon in April! Sam got in on the ballot and Matt qualified on an athlete ticket. 

We want to use this exciting occasion to raise money for a very important charity: Samaritans. As many will know, it provides emotional support to people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those which may lead to suicide. 

Every 90 minutes in the UK, someone dies by suicide. Three-quarters of them are men.

But talking saves lives and Samaritans operates phone lines 24/7 to help people that feel they have no one else to turn to. 

We recently lost a very close family friend, who spent a lot of his years dedicating time to work for the Samaritans, and we wanted to celebrate and support his amazing work by raising money for the charity. 

We are both keen runners and are training very hard for this event. Our goal is to finish the marathon in a combined time of 6 hours. 

This is no easy task. It’s Sam’s first marathon and the couple of halves he has done have been around the 1hr 45 mark. Matt’s fastest marathon time is 2hr 42, so we have our work cut out but are extremely excited by the challenge. Sam less so for Matt’s training regime coming his way. 

Ambitiously our aim is to do 2hr 30 (Matt) and 3hr 30 (Sam) to complete it in a combined time of under 6 hours...

We would be incredibly grateful for any donations to this important cause. It will keep us motivated when training, give us that extra bit of strength on the big day, and importantly help make a difference to those most in need. 

All donations go directly to Samaritans.

Thank you very much and if you want to follow our training please do follow us on our Strava pages for (hopefully) regular training progress!

Matt - https://www.strava.com/athletes/24237297

Sam - https://www.strava.com/athletes/18891960

Sam and Matt