In a time when everyone is practicing separation, the University of Birmingham Medical School football club are coming together (virtually!) to challenge a number of other sports clubs to see who can run or cycle (at 1/4 of the distance) the furthest on Strava as a club in a week. With over 60 current members and old boys, we're aiming to clock over 600 miles over the 7 days and raise money for NHS Charities Together. 

NHS Charities Together is an amazing charity that collates a number of NHS charities to help fund medical equipment and ensure patients have access to the best possible care. Working in the NHS, we are fortunate enough to experience the powerful effects that donations have on patients, their families and the heroic staff and volunteers. From iPads that allow patients to talk to their loved ones for the first time in weeks, to free lunches for those who are giving their all to help people suffering with coronavirus, to counselling services that protect the mental health of staff and volunteers during this crisis. This is a truly worthwhile cause that can completely transform the lives of patients, loved ones and staff together.

We are asking our boys to make their own challenges to complete over the week that will push themselves individually. Here's a list of them:

James Jobling - Running the distance of 2 marathons (84.2km) in 6 days - UPDATE - 4 marathons in 7 days!

Maxim Harris - Running home (virtually) - Running 134km (from Birmingham to St Albans) over 10 days - UPDATE - running 110 miles in 7 days... 

Theo Nabavi and Mike Owen - Running to Hereford County hospital (80km) between them - UPDATE - This went from 40km each... to 80km... to 120km!!!

Matt Jansen - Running 150km over 7 days! - "a half marathon a day keeps the virus away"... - UPDATE - This was updated to 200km in a week... but even that wasn't enough for Matt who ended up running 220km in 7 days!!!

Alex Morelli-Batters - Running the distance from his house in Selly Oak to Circo (the bar)... 400 times! - UPDATE - Make that 1720 times.....!!!!

Rob Miller - Rushed back from Mongolia early so that he can do his bit by running a marathon (42.1km) over the next week! - UPDATE - Well that took him all of 2 days... Make it 3 marathons in a week!

Lewis Pitchford - Running 14km/day - 1km for each letter in his name per day! (shhh… nobody remind him about his middle name… Bradley...)

Zak JP - Running the distance from his home town (Woodchurch) to the Emirates stadium (81km) - probably the first time he’ll get there and not be greeted by disappointment!

Ben Gillman - Running from his house to his nan’s house and back (40 miles) for her 80th birthday (4th May) - Happy Birthday grandma Gillers!

Sam Thomas - Having cycled from London to Brighton already, Sam is now running the distance (76km) - the boy really likes Brighton...

Alex Raggett - Running 100 laps around a football pitch (42km) - do you think he’s missing the sport? - UPDATE - Ha this didn't last long... Running 4 marathons in 7 days...

Max Gardner - Running to France... and back (68km)! We’ve seen him glide around a football pitch, but can he really glide on water!? - UPDATE - Turns out Max likes France and ran around once he got there before coming back (119.6km) !

Arin Pathmanathan - Running his own pyramid scheme! - 7 miles on first day, 6 miles on second, etc… (45km)

Ross Keeler - Running a loop of seven of Birmingham’s biggest and most prestigious football stadiums (67km), including St. Andrews, Villa park, Hawthorns, Walsall, Molineux, Four Dwellings, Metchley Fortress…. - UPDATE - Ross overshot a little and ended up doing nearly double this (113km)!

Dan Grogan - Running the length of 400 American Football (36.5km) pitches dressed as cheerleader! - Give me a C - R - A - Z - Y!

William Williams - Running from Cardiff to Swansea (55km) - ticking off the two Welsh cities whose football clubs have played in the Premier League 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿!

James Blenkinsop - Running home (Myddle)… but thought 90km wasn’t long enough so taking the scenic route (100km)! - UPDATE - Must have taken the really scenic route as he ran an incredible 150km!

Johnny Moore - Cycling 81 miles in memory of Kobe Bryant (81 points = Kobe's highest scoring game) - RIP sporting legend 👑 🏀 - UPDATE - Double it 🙀!

Rob “Chunky” Cavanagh - Taking a (quick) stroll down memory lane - running a loop from uni -> school -> sixth form -> uni… twice (70km)! 

Maneet Patel - Living in a dream land right now - Cycling from where he should be (on his elective in Vellore hospital) to go watch India's cricket giants Chennmai Super Kings (130km). - UPDATE - Went, watched the game, and cycled home (273km)!!

George Monteiro-Noorland - Cycling 206km from the Molineux Stadium (home of Wolverhampton Wanderers) to the Emirates Stadium (home of Everything Thats Bad About Football)! - UPDATE - George ended up cycling there and back (400km) and threw in a 13km run for good measure!

Nathan Farmer - Running to Snobs (the night club) and back (65km) - He’s going to be gutted when he finds out its closed... 😕

Matthew Wilson - “I’ll just run round, see how far I go and run further than hockey” (?km) - UPDATE - Turns out Matt can run far.

Kisal Munasinghe - If everyone else can run over houses and towns, why can’t Kisal run vertically!? Running the vertical height of Mt Everest 5 times (45km)! - UPDATE - Ended up running the vertical height of Everest over 11 times (106km)!

James Webb - Cycling 150 miles, starting in Ilkley, pick your own destination: Edinburgh🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, Brecon Beacons🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿, Portavogie N.🇨🇮 or Selly Oak (taking the M6 route)🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿! 

Ben Rouse - First stop Metchley fortress, next stop King Power Stadium, whilst that’s not the natural progression for most it is for our lad Rousey (74km)! - UPDATE - Ran 75 miles instead!!!

Parth Nakum - Some people dream of world peace, others dream of health and prosperity, Parth dreams of a large coke, 3 mozzarella dippers and 20 box of chicken nuggets - Running to his 4th closest McDonalds (30km) - UPDATE - That Maccies was closed so he ran another 40km (total = 70km) trying to find an open one.

Evan Hardy - Running 24 miles to celebrate his teams (Barnsley) current league position... 24th 😦

Tom Hunter - Running 1km for every goal Rangers have scored in the SPL this season (64km) - its a shame they aren’t a better team 😟 

Ishaan Kotecha - Running around San Marino (39km) - apparently England was “too big” 😟 - UPDATE - Ish completed San Marino and ventured into Italy (71km)!

Cam Kendall - Running home (Stafford) (50km) wearing a different football shirt on each day representing different aspects of his life 👕🏃! - UPDATE - running to Macclesfield to visit his nan (110km)! 

Tom Hart - Running 1km for every reason he loves club - 50km in total!!! - UPDATE - While he was running he thought of another 32 reasons he loves the club - 82km total!!

Alfie Cubberley - Turns out Alfie is as consistent off the pitch as he is on - Running  8km/day, every day (56km). - UPDATE - Running 1km for every league position Ipswich have lost in his life (50km) and 1km for every league position he wants them to climb back up (???km) - let’s see how much he likes Ipswich! 

Luther Lisk - Running over 50km throughout the week because “no hockey player can run anywhere near that” 👀

Will Chick, Ian Newell and James Anthony - Running back to brum (140km) because they miss the club ❤️

Jamaal Choudhry - Running to New Cross hospital (46km) where he’s currently working! #NHShero. 

The Barts Intercalaters - Tom Gower (16/17), Dafydd Plant (17/18), Greg Goodwin (19/20), Soumi Chakravarti (20/21) - SBLHFC are great, but they’re no UBMSFC - Running/cycling (193km) back to Birmingham to help out the boys! ▪️▫️->🔹🔸

Thomas Thorne - Reckons "distance is overated" so is instead aiming to climb 2.5 km whist running/cycling this week 🏔 🏔

Mikey Ferguson - Running 1km for every hour his parents worked for the NHS this week (83Km). Shout out to them 👊  #NHSHeroes - UPDATE - Pushed through an extra 17km (100km total) to cover some of his sister's weekly hours! 

Matt Eardley - Cycling as fast as he can from Shrewsbury to get to the Metchley fortress (74km) 🏰 🚴‍♂️

Luke Levy - Running between his “two favourite football grounds” - Tottenham Hotspur to Barnet FC (35km) - Interestingly both clubs have the same number of Premier League titles! 👀🏆 - UPDATE - Spurs may not be one for happy surprises, but Luke has gone and double his initial target (75km)!

Niall Dean - Apparently the physical weight of the soul is 21 grams - Being ginger, Niall is running 42km to prove he has double the soul of anybody that tells him otherwise! 🔥

Dafydd George - We’ve only gone and brought in the big guns - He’s had a decorated career running for Wales (kind of) and is dusting off the vest one last time to run 100km for UBMSFC 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿💪.

James Bundred - Another experiences runner for you - Bundred has some time off so is going to complete a casual 70 miles, maybe more, we’ll see 😴... - UPDATE - 139 miles... Just gonna leave that there.

Ben Stanley - Running to “the home of the greatest football club in the world”... Wolverhampton Wanderers (52km) - Lets hope he’s better at running than judging the quality of football teams 🐺🐺🐺😳! 

James Linton - Running from Metchley 3G to Players bar every day (60km) in commemoration of the classic End Of TNL Stues - This man knows 🕺💃!

Andrew Harte - Running 69km, but won’t tell us why… 🤷‍♂️

Joel Brady - Cycling from his house to Wembley stadium… 3 times, because he really really really misses football 🚴‍♂️🚴🚴‍♂️! 

Liam Barber - Running 51km, some Lord of the Rings thing, trust me we're doing you a favour not explaining it.

Any donations are welcome and will spur us on to run further and cycle harder!