Wigan dad completes month-long fitness challenge to raise awareness for men's mental health
A Wigan dad has completed a gruelling month-long fitness challenge in a bid to shine a spotlight on men’s mental health.
During the month of November, Jamie Greenall ran 370km wearing a 15kg backpack.
The challenge titled Run a Mile in Someone Else’s Shoes was also to help raise money for Andy’s Man Club.
Its not the first time Jamie has took on a fitness challenge for charity.
In December last year, he climbed the the equivalent of Mount Everest five times on a stairmaster over 29 days for the Brick.
Jamie said: “I do something every year for charity and try and relate it to fitness and get people involved.
"This year I was trying to do something different and decided to do it in November instead of December because we’re planning on going on holiday for Christmas.
"I thought November, men’s mental health, movember how can we tie it in?
"I opted for a run with a weighted backpack to symbolise the mental struggle men carry every day.
"Every day throughout the month of November, anyone could approach me and challenge me.
"They’d give me the distance, they would come along with me and we would have a good chat.
"A lot of people opened up which was great.”
One of the many people who joined Jamie on his runs was TikTok running influencer Alistair Almond from Lancashire.
He has so far raised just over £1,700.
Jamie’s company GT Services also pledged to donate £1 for every kilometre ran.
At the end of his 30 days running with some friends and some complete strangers that I met online, Jamie wanted to have one last push to try and get the figure as close to £2,000 as possible so he then decided to run an ultra-marathon around the DW stadium in Wigan.
Jamie added: “The final day I brought my daughter along and completed Blackburn 10KM, for this I ran without the backpack to symbolise the ‘weight lifting’ and that it does eventually get easier the mental struggles in life.
"We got a good a good selection of other companies that sponsored the event.
"The ultra-marathon was torture to say the least after all the mileage done in November already but certainly worth it.”
To donate to Jamie’s fund-raiser visit: https://www.justgiving.com/page/jamie-greenall-2