Swindon man runs charity marathon in his 8 metre long garden

Andy Johnson, 23, used to deliver for Swindon Link and grew up in Sparcells. For the last six months he's been living in Bradford and last weekend he did a marathon in his back garden.

It took him seven and a half hours but charity worker Andy Johnson has been beating the lockdown blues by running the eight metre length of his garden up and down the path in a bid to run a marathon.

And it's all been in aid of CAP UK (Christians Against Poverty), which is the organisation that he works for. CAP UK also has a centre in Wroughton.

So far he has raised more than £860 but hopes to raise a bit more from his Justgiving page.

The keen marathon runner, who completed the New York marathon in under three hours, got the idea because he was meant to be completing a coast to coast run across the UK but then that event got delayed because of the lockdown.

He said: "It was hard to measure but I ran a distance of between 26.2 and 30.2 miles. It took me so long as I had to slow down every eight metres to turn around as otherwise I would have run bang smack into the wall if I had got any speed up.

"We live-streamed the entire event on my Facebook page and people were so supportive.

"I must admit I found it very hard. It was just so boring. My neighbour has a swan statue in their garden so I was studying it as I was running and after about two hours I was hallucinating that it was moving.

"But after two hours my housemates put on some music and that helped a lot. I couldn't believe that I did it. It felt surreal.

"Straight away afterwards, my knees felt like they had no joints left in them and my entire body felt stiff! Then the next morning when I woke up, my right shin felt like it had been sliced in two.

"A few people have asked me if I would do this again and, honestly, I feel the need to write this to remind myself that running laps of 8m at a time just made me feel tired, dizzy and ended with aches and pains all over my body.

"Knowing me, if I don't remind myself, I will probably forget how bad it is and want to do this all again in a couple of months time.

"I am so grateful to everybody who donated and showed support."

To donate visit justgiving.com/fundraising/marathoninmygarden and if you want to see the stream of his run visit the event's Facebook page here.