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Gary McKee - 110 marathons in 110 days.
60 Plays4 years ago
In this episode we speak with Gary about his current fundraising challenge to run 110 marathons in 110 days for Macmillan Cancer Support & West Cumbria Hospice At Home.
You can follow Garys challenge on:
Twitter @Marathon_Man110
Garys donation page is: virginmoneygiving.com/GaryMcKee1
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Transcript
Gary McKee's Marathon Challenge
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to this episode of the UK sports chat podcast. I'm Joe Williams and today I am speaking with Gary McKee. Gary is currently running 110 marathons in 110 days for Macmillan and West Cumbria hospice at home.
00:00:19
Speaker
This isn't the first big challenge I learned whilst interviewing Gary that he has partaken. He's a serial fundraiser taking on some amazing challenges. I particularly enjoyed hearing about how his community all come together on his challenges during this interview. I hope you do too.
00:00:40
Speaker
Enjoy. Any comments, please send them through to us on our social media channels and also look out for another podcast tomorrow.
Inspiration and Motivation
00:00:50
Speaker
It's a double podcast week with Super Sam Holness. Enjoy. Hi Gary. Welcome. Thanks for coming on. Hi Joe. How are you? Yeah, I'm doing well. Thank you. Thanks very much. How are you? I'm fine. After the day has run, I've done a little bit of recovery and have plenty of days.
00:01:09
Speaker
Good. So we're on day 32, aren't we? Tell us about this challenge that you're doing at the moment. So the challenge is to run 110 marathons in 110 days. And that started on the 1st of February and it will finish on the 21st of May. 110 billion McMillan were formed 110 years ago to celebrate the 100th of runs from lands into giant rods.
00:01:39
Speaker
And I just thought that with COVID restrictions, I was going to plan to do it again, but with COVID restrictions, it wasn't possible. So I decided I would run 110 malefins in 110 days. But I would also bring in a local charity. Let's come be a hospice at home, mainly because like most charities, the shops are closed. They're not generating a regular income. And a lot of the charities have had to lay people off, you know,
00:02:08
Speaker
but bare bones are the bones and I just thought that I would help out and try and raise some trunks for them at the same time as Macmillan. Great okay so you did so that was for the centenary year you did a hundred marathons in a hundred days for Macmillan. No, not on the centennial, I actually ran from one centige on a groat. I don't know. Okay cool so she did
00:02:34
Speaker
lands into John O'Groats and you've done a hundred marathons a hundred days as well haven't you? I did a hundred marathons in a hundred days four years ago and the reason behind that was my full reason started when my dad passed away in 2003. He'd had a cancer diagnosis in 1997. I just remember as a family how we all felt when we heard one word sort of turned our world upside down. Cancer is a horrible word.
00:03:05
Speaker
And I just wanted, when he passed away, he passed away seven years later, me dad was a cancer survivor, but he passed away with an unrelated illness. I wanted to do something in his memory. I remember back to over 2030, June 1997, when we were told that horrible news.
Community Support and Involvement
00:03:20
Speaker
And I became a fundraiser for Macmillan knowing that the work that I would do and the money that I would raise would help other people who would find themselves in the unfortunate position that we found ourselves in. I believe that Macmillan, we say a charity begins at home and I think
00:03:33
Speaker
of Millon going to more homes than any other charity. The Untancellors of God. Yeah. Yeah, they are. They're a fantastic charity. And like you said, those charities do need our support at the moment. Well, actually, you've done, you've done, London to John and Grouch, you've done a hundred and a hundred, and now you're doing a hundred and ten in a hundred and ten, because it's, Millon's a hundred and tenth year. It is the hundredth year involved. I didn't quite finish that, the hundredth year involved, because my dad would have paid 80,
00:04:02
Speaker
and it was 20 years since he diagnosed us for 80 and 20 simple months, 100. But that's all that came about. But yeah, I've ran months on Johnny Croats. I've ran only in 100 years. I ran to London from my home to take part in the London marathon the first time I've done this. Which is around about 50 miles a day for a week and then to the top round London. So yeah, I've done a little bit of running. Where do you live? I live in Cumbria, up in Colch country, the Lake District.
00:04:35
Speaker
miles from the coast and three miles from the mountains so it's an absolute beautiful part of the world. Amazing, yeah brilliant. So you ran to London to do the marathon from Cambria? I did. It took me a week. We had to drive down and see which roads I could actually run on. Mostly it was on the year 6 but we had to close where they'll be stopping how far each day we'll be running to take us into London and then I rocked up on the Sunday for a marathon.
00:05:03
Speaker
Wow. I was going to ask you, I think I already understand from what you've said, though, is where does your drive come from to keep doing such big challenges? I think it comes from, I can take myself back to the 23rd of June, 1997, when I came off from work and my family was sitting outside and apart from my dad, and I knew that something was wrong.
00:05:32
Speaker
And I can't remember, I got out of the car and I came down the path and my mum was sitting outside in my sister's and I said, what's wrong? I still to this day don't know what to say. But I went in the house and my dad was sitting there and he had tears in his eyes. My dad wasn't the sort of person who he would ever say crying or anything. And I said, what's wrong? And he said those words, you know, cancer. And I think that I sort of, in my mind, I think I bottled that feeling. And it always, whenever I take on a challenge, I think back to
00:06:01
Speaker
you know, how I felt, and I know that that's going to be replicated by people who don't want to get told that news. And it's horrible, horrible news. It doesn't always turn out bad. And my dad's cancer didn't turn out bad. He died of a, he actually had a heart attack. He lived another 67 years after his diagnosis and he lived a fulfilling life. He rolled his legs up, he's seen life differently. He got on with it, he thought he'd been given a second chance, but it just, it takes me back whenever I focus on what I want to do. And I think about that day,
00:06:31
Speaker
That's what starts me. Yeah. Your dad sounds like he was a resilient person. Yeah, he was. He was just a typical
Family's Role and Pacing
00:06:40
Speaker
family man. You know, he liked to find, he went to the local region and he played dominoes and he liked the way he sang his song and he was a happy, happy fella. He wouldn't let anybody say a bad word about me that anybody thought the world of him, you know, and when he died, it was a massive
00:06:59
Speaker
shock to our community to everybody because he was he went to church every week he was a he was a pillar of the society there you know he was always helping people and yeah and doing things he he would do his own fundraisers that would allow people to go to lewis it would probably you know he just he was just a really really nice person yeah well it sounds like you're carrying it on for him as well so so today is day 32 isn't it yeah around 30
00:07:29
Speaker
How are you feeling, 32 marathons in? Remarkably well, to be quite honest with you. The pace that I'm doing isn't anything really exciting. I'm doing all my marathons in before I was actually not stretching things. What you've got to consider is today's run is for tomorrow. You've got to understand that the harder you go today, the harder it will be tomorrow.
00:07:56
Speaker
We don't go too hard. If I say somebody, when we're running, I run on a local psychopath, which is just outside my house, up and down, it brings me back to my house. We see people every day, smiles on people's faces, see kids out on bikes with their families. Everybody's clapping me, saying, come on, marathon man. And, you know, it's a really, really good post, a good feeling. And it's nice when you know that you inspire other people. There's been a Facebook page sent you locally.
00:08:24
Speaker
And in the first week, there was 500 people joined up to it, just simply because they're seeing me doing what I'm doing, and they want to be a part of it, to do their own walks, to share recipes, you know, they all help each other. It's a lovely page where people are going on and putting their walks on, putting photographs on, and for ourselves, the families, and it's really good.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's brilliant. A community come together like that. Really good. Yeah, really good. And your words then, today's run is for tomorrow. That is so relevant for all runners and it's a lesson that a lot of runners learn when they go out.
00:09:06
Speaker
just flat out all the time. And that's not necessarily the best way to prepare yourself when you're training. You need to run some slow miles. And I know that that's clearly a strategy for you in this, but that's something that runners really need to hear that as well, don't they? Well, I certainly think so. I mean, you can only go hard at it for a certain length of time before you start getting twinges and getting little injuries here and there and a little injury turns into a bigger injury and you can't sustain.
00:09:36
Speaker
just go on hammer and tongs all the time. You've got to have slow runs, you do tempo stuff. And I understand all that. For me, what I'm doing, 26.10 mile every single day for 110 days, it doesn't need to be fast. It's just got to be completed. And my peers, it just pickle simply because you lose weight. Now, regardless of how many calories I put in,
Daily Routine and Challenges
00:10:00
Speaker
I'm going to burn weight off. And I'm doing 185 mile of weight.
00:10:05
Speaker
So there is going to be weight comes off, and as the weight comes off, you pierce it and it picks up. You try and control that by just slowing things down, but you tend to find that when you're running with somebody, or even when you're in a world of your own and you're focusing on what's ahead of you, you do, you get into happy road, happy mode routine, and the way you go. And before long, you realise, oh no, I've got to slow down there.
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's it. So are you being careful with your diet or not? Are you trying to pile the calories in? Well, a friend of mine owns a healthy food eating establishment and he's doing all my food for me for 110 days. So I get food deliveries twice a week, food preps and everything.
00:10:51
Speaker
So all I have to do is come in, take it out of the fridge and put it in the right room, everything started for me. So it's absolutely fantastic. I explained it. I don't know if you know this part, but we children, while I'm doing 110 days, I've got three children and they're all doing 110 days too. So my son who's 16 is doing 26.2 mile on the exercise bike. The other son who's 13 is jumping on the treadmill and they were doing three mile on the treadmill or six mile on the bike and we eight year old daughter.
00:11:19
Speaker
She's jumping a mile on the treadmill, a three mile or six mile on the bike. So every single day, all foreigners are doing something. And I explained to them at the beginning that 110 days was 16 weeks. So I said, if you think that you cut a family pizza into 16 pieces each week, we eat a slice of pizza. I said, some weeks, the toppings won't be too awfully ever. And that simply meant you'll have schoolwork, you won't be bothered wanting to do things.
00:11:49
Speaker
And you've got to eat that slice before you can move on to the next slice. So I told my nephew of these who works as a pizza delivery guy who told the boss who said, I'll send them guys pizzas every week. So every week I get my third delivery from the next health shop.
00:12:06
Speaker
And I get pictures delivered on Sunday at night to replenish the slice that we made. That's amazing that your kids are doing that with you. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. So my kids are 16, 14 and eight. It's really similar to yours. Two lads. But my daughter's 14. And I've actually really struggled with keeping her exercising with other than walking throughout lockdown.
00:12:35
Speaker
You know, it's that age, I think, that secondary school age. That's amazing that they've committed like that with you as well. They're saying they fundraise all of their lives and they think that's what they do. They've been fundraising themselves since, well, Boar is the middle one, since five-year-old. Alfie here was seven. They've done fundraising activities. Boar, in 2018, a pair of them started one January. For Boar, it lasted 501 days. It ran a minimum of three miles.
00:13:05
Speaker
501 days. He raised £35,000. He won a young private sports award down in London, similar to the private Britain awards. He won famous awards locally. He just absolutely nailed
Reflections and Future
00:13:20
Speaker
it. And he understands, we talked about what does commitment mean? What does completion mean? We talked about lots and lots of different things. 501 days of grandfathers or
00:13:33
Speaker
to do what he's done now for 110 to support his dad. It's a piece of cake to be honest. What an inspiring family. It's incredible. Really, really incredible. So there's a second charity as well now, and we're big fans of Macmillan. We really are. But I noticed also on your just giving, there's another charity, which we should mention as well, isn't it, your fundraising for?
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, so it's less commonly hospice at home, who look after people at end of care life. So it isn't just cancer, it's people with dementia and all sorts of other life rendering issues. And they are a local charity, but they've got hospice nurses that don't go out and care for people. So going to the home and wheel steer and it gives a bit of respect to the families, you know, all up and up, the loved ones can be
00:14:31
Speaker
really, really difficult. So I wanted to raise the awareness of the charity but also raise some money for them because of what causes don't to charities. So that's the reason behind. I remember the day I went into the offices to make them and it was like they'd run the jackpot without actually putting any money in the machine. They were so pleased that I was going to do what I was doing.
00:14:53
Speaker
know, I find well, you know, when you run 110 days, I know it's going to be difficult. What's more difficult than fearsome cancer or what's more difficult than, you know, having a proper dimension and things like that Alzheimer's. My mum had Alzheimer's, and I watched her deteriorate. And it isn't a nice thing to do. So these people are there helping out. It's absolutely crucial and it's part of our community. And the fantastic, the brilliant
00:15:21
Speaker
Good, yeah, that's two brilliant charities to be fundraising for. Have you always been sporty, Gary, or was this something you've took up as an adult, or did you play at a sport at school? You always ran? No, I haven't always ran. I've only been able to run, but I'm formerly a rugby player. I've been a local, a player to the local rugby team, and I was brought on. It's a fantastic setup. And after that, I only got actually into running.
00:15:51
Speaker
Um, I've done a few half marathons and I did, I wasn't quite happy with my time, but I went back and I trained a little bit harder and it's a little bit better, but I've always been a person who watches, it would be like the pint that goes after it. I don't, moving in the Lake district, you can't not, uh, go up on the fails. It's what we're doing to everything. It's on our doorstep. So I always like to go and with a group of the lads, we'd go for a walk.
00:16:20
Speaker
overnight job. It always finishes with a pub and a pint and sandwich and chips and the crack and it's fantastic. We live in the nicest place in the world so it's a playground that is fantastic to grow up in and you tend not to really appreciate that until you get a little bit older and we do have a walk-in club obviously at the moment with Covid that it doesn't all want to go ahead but we tried to get our four times a year through the seasons or four different seasons because
00:16:50
Speaker
the mountains are totally different throughout these days. But the track's always the same, you know, when you finish it above and we've ordered sandwich and chips and we're all having a beer and everybody's, you look round and everybody's smiling and they're happy. So I've always had that element in me. I played sport, on the scale and off the scale. But running, I've never been in a running club at all in my life. And the only competitive running I've ever done,
00:17:16
Speaker
is against myself, you know, when you're doing the London marathon, you just want to give a good time. When I'm not bothered about beating Joe Bloggs or anybody, I just want to... I'm always in competition with myself to try and get the best out of myself, as opposed to beating somebody to get a medal. You know, to me, it isn't about the medals, it isn't about the awards or achievements. I think my life's centered around trying to help other people. Yeah. Brilliant. That's it. Hi. How was you?
00:17:46
Speaker
Set your day up. What does a typical day look like then? When you run in and what do you do post run as well? I'm intrigued as to what you do for your recovery. Yeah, so a typical day, and there's two typical days because one day I'll be at work and another day I won't. So a typical day would be, I get up at six o'clock, come downstairs, I'll give me legs.
00:18:10
Speaker
a little rope. I've got a machine that I'll put on my legs and I'll do them up before I go on a bed at night as well. So I'll give my legs a little rope. Walk about. When you get on the bed, you confirm there is a little bit of tension in your legs, a little bit stiff. From downstairs, you wish you had a stem or a lift, but you haven't, so you come downstairs like Pinocchio. And once in five minutes, your legs are ready to go up.
00:18:35
Speaker
But I give them a little load, then I put, I get changed, I put compression, I always run in compression tights and compression socks, keep everything tight, nice and tight and together. I then do a video blog for me Facebook posting for Twitter. I post out every day. Somebody else manages me Facebook, me Twitter page, so I send them the video. And then I'll put a couple of slices, I have a cup of coffee, couple of slices of toast with jam on.
00:19:02
Speaker
Make sure my hydration bottles are all sorted out. Do a little bit of stretching, but not a lot. I've never been a king before stretching. And then somebody will come. I have a runner with me every day, one runner. And then they'll come and I have somebody who'll take the photographs before we start and take them outside the house and they'll go to different locations locally and they'll take a few photographs and then get uploaded to
00:19:32
Speaker
the relevant social media platforms. So then we do, I have two responses a day, so I wear a Macmillan vest at a hospice at home vest, and on the vest is a card that's been printed up with food to sponsor this. Now the sponsor can be anybody, it can be from the local pool bar, hairdressers too, the garage, the butchers, or a lot of the vests that I've wore this time have been in memory of somebody. So I'd have two a day,
00:20:02
Speaker
um that's 220 vests and that's all though within three weeks when i said i wanted best sponsors it was 220 people approached me within three weeks and they've gone at a hundred pound each so that's 23 000 pound yes in no time you know it's absolutely fantastic the support that i've had so we'll go out we'll do round about 30 mile which takes us in a loop yes round about two and a half mile down turn around come back up
00:20:28
Speaker
another term. It gets me around about 13 miles, brings me back home, swap me vests. So the second sponsor comes on, we'll go back out and do the back half. I carry food with me as we run in or have a snack. If we say people will stop to talk, it isn't about time, it's about completion. And generally on weekends when there's quite a few people out, there's lots of people
00:20:58
Speaker
with big, massive smiles on my face, but I think when you're trying to encourage you to clap on you up the cycle path where I run, it's really nice. And then I'll come home, I'll finish my day, I'll come home, I have something to eat straight away, wife loves the bath, sort it out for me, or if my wife's at work, I'll run a bath, put some salt in, I'll sit in the bath for half an hour. That would be a normal day if I'm going to work. I set off earlier,
00:21:27
Speaker
And then I'll do what I've just done there. I'll get changed and then I'll go to work. And I work the afternoon shift, so I'll do a turtle tent. So I'll go down to work at Salifield. I work at Salifield, do my job, and then come home and try and hydrate throughout the day, depending on the weather conditions. If it's a lot hotter, I know we have another great deal of heat at this moment in time, but I'll take a couple of salt tablets just to try and replenish the lost salts and stuff like that.
00:21:57
Speaker
That's typically the day you're managing your social media. As you get towards the end, more people want a little pace here. You know, I remember last time I was going into schools and doing all sorts of things, but it does tape up your day. Yeah. Yeah, I bet it does. Who's joining? Yeah, is it friends or who's coming in? I've got only friends who's running with me. He's doing 55 at the 110 days.
00:22:26
Speaker
So with his work patterns, I know that sounds like every other day, but some days he's doing three on the trot and then he'll have a couple of days off for work himself and then he'll come back. So we've got to organise because I can only have one runner who's actually come up with me and went. What I don't want to do, and there's photographs and there's drone footage and everything to support what we're doing, he's all about Ford and Covid.
00:22:51
Speaker
restrictions aren't being broken or bent or anything at all. I don't want anybody to get the wrong end of the stick and smear what is a fantastic challenge and done perfectly legally. We're not creating, we're doing it local, we're not going out to areas and I've got one runner. These are the people who are running, but not with me, so they'll do a different route or whatever and still count it as their marathon and try and support me from that way.
00:23:22
Speaker
So when this takes you through to May, doesn't it? So some of the restrictions will change. Do you see anything changing then as you go in through this? Yeah, the only thing that will change will be able to run in Group 6. And what that does is it just changes the dynamics of when you're running, who you're running with and what the crack is. And it's a bit more of a party atmosphere than anything else. We will be quite careful with
00:23:53
Speaker
Two people come on bikes too, you know, because the can't rumble, come on the bike and that still gives you support because it's still cycling behind, you know, maybe a little bit in front of you and you can still have that conversation while we are changing distance. And it does, it does bring, the last time when we turned the hundreds, there was lots and lots of people wanting to come. I remember on Easter Sunday, which was the last weekend before I went to London to finish the marathon, finish it off on the hundreds.
00:24:21
Speaker
And there was 130 people outside the house. You know, when I came out, it was like the scene from DIY SOS, they all had my mind on this song. There was people with crumbs, there was people walking dogs, there was a tandem. And when we went down the sidewalk path and I was leaving, and it was way back up the top of the sidewalk path, we were running because we had one people on one side and pipes on the other or whatever. And it was for the gas and it was
00:24:51
Speaker
She was baking all day long, people coming back to the house and having a piece of cake and a cup of coffee and a cup of tea and it was just a fantastic atmosphere. So we've lost a little bit of that due to Covid.
00:25:03
Speaker
but I know that things will change halfway through when you can't get up to six pay for coming. Yes, yeah. How do you manage mentally when you're out there? Because it's a lot that you're doing day after day after day. Is this anything specific you learned when you did your 100 and 100 or your jog? No, I think it's just when you make a commitment. I've always said that, you know, a strength isn't, and it might pay for some pay, but not for many.
00:25:34
Speaker
lifting your body weight in a gym. To me, strength is basically delivered under promises. And you know fine well that some days there's going to be obstacles pulling you away, but it shows what type of person you are, by how you get through those problems, and if you go around them or over them, it doesn't really matter. You've got to navigate yourself to get around them. So at least you do have difficult days. I remember
00:26:03
Speaker
Funny enough, it was on day, it was similar to yesterday, day 31, well it was day 31 when I'd done 100. My wife had come home from work, night shift. I'd looked at the clock and it was about three o'clock in the morning and I knew she couldn't be home. So she hadn't finished, you know, and I was feeling a presence in the bedroom. She wasn't talking and I said, what's wrong? And I put her here and I sort of sniffled in and I said, what's wrong? And she said, one of our closest friends passed away, he was 41.
00:26:33
Speaker
And I said, they told me they did not, and I wouldn't accept it. So that was the worst day that I had in the 100. It was the only time I ran on my own. I couldn't face pain with anybody, and I couldn't. It just stopped. I knew that I'd made a commitment to people who were facing cancer. So I knew I couldn't stop. But it sort of, the day consumed me. I stopped a lot, I cried a lot. I knew I had to get through it. I wasn't bothered about times. I ran up to the end of the hill valley.
00:27:00
Speaker
And I came home and I was on my own and my wife had gone right to school with our friend and he was rubbing with him. You know, it was a very, very, very difficult time. I had to make the decision, you know, what do I do? Am I carry on? Yeah. But I knew that I'd made a decision and I knew that I couldn't stop. So I sort of pushed his passing down the back of my mind, obviously saying his family. And it was a really, really difficult time.
00:27:29
Speaker
He had 31, I still had nearly 70 days to do, to a month. So I knew by the time that I'd finished, everybody else had moved on with the grieving process and I was still stuck in a rut because I'd put it to the back of my mind and I knew it would bite me. I was trying not to be finished. And believe me, it did. I went through a really bad period of grieving like you do. And I felt
00:27:55
Speaker
very, very much alone because I knew my friends and sort of not tell them what's period and so on. And I found it difficult. So these terms, things will happen. And it defines you as a person of how you cope with it, how you deal with it. And injuries pop up, you get little niggles. But again, you might just send me somebody I had to stop, somebody else's person counts and I had to stop because my leg was sore. I couldn't even live with myself. You know, so
00:28:24
Speaker
It can be a long day, but I can't remember. I'm on day 33 tomorrow. I can't remember a day where we haven't had to stop because one of us has been laughing about something. You know, we find, we talk about lots of different things. We're living a beautiful part, so there's loads of people out. The beauty is all around you. When we just stop to rub our legs, you hear the birds song, you can hear the lambs in the fields. You know, you just look at each other and you smile. It's fantastic.
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah. And it is, I know it's difficult and people think it's a long time, 110 days, but if somebody said to you, you had 110 days to live, you wouldn't think it was a long time. You wouldn't be saying, I'll tell you what, I'll have a life here. You know what, you would live a life differently. And I think for those 110 days, it's now down to about 78 left. And I think that it's not 78 marathons, but 78 opportunities to raise as much money as we can to help people respond their own self in an unfortunate position as an illness.
00:29:22
Speaker
you know, that we can sort of help them with. So that's, that's how we approach it each day. Somebody's always got it worse than you, 26 miles an hour from the game of things. As human beings, we look at the big number, instead of looking at the small number, the small number is four, it's four hours, four hours of just running and laughing and enjoying life. We get one life, so we should be enjoying it. You know, and that's exactly what we look at every single day.
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah. Your perspective is really, really inspiring, Gary. It's amazing. And to me, you mentioned the word community earlier, but the things you've mentioned, you've got first sponsors who
00:30:06
Speaker
you're all lining up, the clapping of the 130 people and people joining in and clapping and smiling when you're going past and people joining you and your wife baking at the end of the other one. And it sounds like you create this community feeling in what you're doing. It's very, very inspiring, very inspiring. It's a powerful thing, you know, when you know that you can inspire somebody to do something, it is a powerful thing and it's a gift. And it isn't a gift that I'm prepared, not to lose.
00:30:35
Speaker
try to do something or get something, somebody out of the house, off the sofa to go and run. They need a mile or two mile or whatever. And I'm going to use that gift. And that's what my dad would have said it was. It was a gift. I remember when I told you about my son around for 500, one days, every single date, because that is a long time for the child at that age. And every single day I said a word to him. That was a Latin word. And they give me the meaning of that word.
00:31:04
Speaker
And that word was resurgent, which translates to, I shall rise again. So I would say to the boar every day, resurgent, and he would look at me right in the eye and he would say, I shall rise again. So on day one, first of February, just before I went out the door to start running, he walked up to me and he looked at me and he said, resurgent. And I looked at him and I said, I shall rise again. And he looked at me knowingly, knowingly.
00:31:29
Speaker
And he just saw the shook his head, and away I went. And that is something that lives with me every single day. I shall rise again. I shall rise again for the people who the money that we raise will benefit from what we're doing. I shall rise for them people. Yeah, that's special. That's very special. Have you any plans for future challenges, or are you just concentrating on this one at the moment? Because it doesn't sound like you're the sort of person
00:31:59
Speaker
who won't do more? I think as a fundraiser you look at life as what I certainly do is windows of opportunity and doing things that you can do while the windows open and I know often challenges that I'm doing, I'm four years older than when I've been 100, anybody acts differently but fundraising
00:32:26
Speaker
that if you do it with a raffle or a bingo or a KXL or a 110 marathons, it makes the same money. Maybe not the same amount of money. I've always explained to my kids and sundryers that £50 buys a food blender for some dude throughout cancer. If you can raise £50, you've helped somebody enormously to be able to get on and live the life a little bit better than we're doing now.
00:32:53
Speaker
I don't know what the future holds, to be quite honest with you. What I do know is that I've got a fantastic family. When things get too difficult, as in the challenges that I've always set myself, which have been big, and people think, you know, sometimes out of my reach. I know that I've got a pattern to have more kids who will pick it up and run with it. And we'll do a family very proud, or like my dad tried to do, my dad. I know people say to me, dad would be really proud of you.
00:33:22
Speaker
And I know that he would, because I know how proud I am of my children for what they're doing. You know, they do it without patterning an eyelid. They've all trained today, they've all done that a bit. And they're just, they're loving what we're doing, because they say that they're helping people. They've got their own, or how else he's got a page checked up. So there's money coming into that. One of the guys that was running with me, he's doing 55 methods, he's got a page checked up, there's money going on the lot.
00:33:48
Speaker
and there's money on my kids. So between us, we've raised over £40,000 at the moment, which will help a lot of people. If you're thinking about £40,000 divided by the £50 for the third blenders, you're reaching out to a lot of people, aren't you? Yeah, you are. That's brilliant. It really is brilliant. What is your page before we wrap up? Tell us where people can go to sponsor, if they'd like to, and where they can follow your journey as well, what your social media is. Yeah, so it's on Virgin Money.
00:34:18
Speaker
virgin money, virgin giving, virgin money giving dot com slash Gary McKay one. We'll share that link as well. Gary McKay until the virgin money thing will come up. People can follow me on Twitter. It's Madison Man 110 on 10 and I'm on Facebook if anybody wants to get it. Do send me a friend request and watch the blogs and what have you. This week, the local brewery, NDL Brewery,
00:34:48
Speaker
releasing a marathon man IPA. So all the proceeds of the beer, the marathon man beer, will go on to my pH. They've done that four years ago and it was a massive, massive cellar. So they're bringing it back as marathon man 110 and it's helped us for ideas. But it's been bubbled now and it's ready for sale. So how cool. That is brilliant. I, Gary, I do like an IPA. I will put an order in. I will. I will.
00:35:18
Speaker
I think I've got my picture on the front. I will. I'll definitely, I'll buy an IPA. I've loved chatting to you. Thanks ever so much for coming on. It's really, I've said it already, but what an inspiring story and to be with your family. And I wish you the best of luck with the remaining marathons. I look forward to following along on social and I'll drop you a message to let you know what I think of this IPA. Absolutely fantastic, is it?
00:35:48
Speaker
If you want to get in touch towards the end or afterwards and you see what we've raised or whatever, if there's enough interest then I don't mind speaking about what I was all going against. It's been nice talking to people and letting people understand it isn't just about the marathon, it's about everything that goes with it. Yeah, brilliant. Thanks ever so much Gary.