The Walking Netball Ladies have now completed their second 26 challenge.

We decided to ‘run’ a marathon – 26 miles. No, we didn’t do this individually but did it collectively. Fifteen of us took up the challenge of walking, jogging or running (or a combination of all three) 1.8 miles each, recording our times and then all these times were added together to see how fast we could complete a marathon.

The weather has been glorious and most plotted a route and set out.

Barbara started us off by sending in a time the day after the challenge was launched. She managed to walk her distance on a treadmill and gave us a benchmark of 33 minutes. Some did it with a dog for company, Mandy with her horse and Gemma made us laugh by doing her distance on the beach in flip flops with two young children. Times were all very close to the 30 minute mark until Jack emailed her amazing time, for 1.9 miles, of 17.53 minutes. Not only that but a fantastic photo followed. She is our very own superwoman. 

Everyone enjoyed the challenge, some even did it several times to improve their own score. Manuela managed to shave nearly 7 minutes off her first time. This was fantastic and shows how competitive the ladies are.

The overall time for our collective 26 miles was 8 hours 35.33 minutes. 

Thanks go to everyone who took part and we will be donating extra items for the Bognor food bank.

Thanks again to Dinah for organising the photos, they show us passing on a wooden spoon but nobody ended up with it!

Here’s to the next one! 

Ann McLean

Photos: Dinah Barrand