“I reckon we’ve definitely earned some extra slices of turkey” – Podiatry duo reflect on incredible Movember

Students and staff from GCU’s Podiatry programme have joined forces to raise an incredible £4460 for Movember.

A total of 17 students and three staff members got themselves ‘moving for mental health’ by walking and running an incredible combined distance of 1600km throughout the five weeks of November.

The month-long event helps raise awareness and funds for a variety of men’s health projects; including Prostate Cancer UK, suicide prevention and testicular cancer.

We sat down with final-year students Cameron Turner and Donald Tait, who covered an incredible 420km between them. They reflected on their experience and their good-natured rivalry that developed over the course of the month.

What made you decide to get involved in Movember?

Donald: “I’d obviously heard about Movember before and thought about doing it but never actually taken that step to get involved. I then heard about Chris Hoy’s cancer diagnosis a week or so before November started and our lecturer Jackie Locke got in touch to tell us about a couple of his friends who’d been diagnosed as well. That spurred me on to do it because I just thought ‘why am I not doing this?’.

“I also know a lot of people who are affected by poor mental health, including men in my family, so that also really inspired me to get involved.”

Cameron: “I was the same as Donald. I’d heard about Movember before but never really put much thought into doing it. I’ve been running a lot myself over the past year or so as well. I got Jackie’s email too and Donald then asked if I wanted to do something together. It’s for such a good cause so there was basically no reason not to do it.”

Am I right in saying you both ran 200km?

Cameron: “Well… I actually ran 220km…”

Donald: “Cammy has to make sure he beats me, even if it’s just slightly! I stuck to my original goal of 200km, yes."

Cameron: “I actually wanted to run 211km because that’s the equivalent of five marathons…”

Donald: “That definitely wasn’t a round enough number for me! We wanted to make it a real challenge to help encourage people to donate and also to keep us motivated.”

Cameron: “It was tricky because uni started getting really busy – it was probably the worst month for it! The weather didn’t help either but I think it was good because the challenge actually pushed us to get out there. We both live in the Southside so that definitely helped us stay motivated by holding one another to account.”

Did you have a target distance each week?

Cameron: “It was a bit awkward because November started on a Friday, but I basically aimed to do 50km per week. I roughly split it into 10km each run but we did a couple of half marathons, which meant we could go easy other days.

“I ended up basically eating everything in sight for a month because we were burning a lot of energy. We were on placement Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and both work at the weekends as well, so it was always dark and always cold for our runs! I reckon we’ve definitely earned some extra slices of turkey.”

I take it you are both now going to ditch the running for a while after that momentous effort?

Cameron: “Definitely not! I had a week off last week and my goals are to run a marathon in May and go sub-20 minutes in the 5k.”

Donald: “I’m not running. I’ll be chilling for at least the next two weeks. I’m kind of sick of running and I’ve actually really missed the gym, so I’ll go back to that. I was running for at least an hour, four or five times a week - I’ve got nothing left.”

Finally, you must both be delighted with the total distance and total amount raised as a team?

Cameron: “It’s fantastic. People keep asking me how much the Podiatry team raised and I always think it’s lower and then always have to check because it is such a serious amount of money.”

Donald: “The Movember app lets you see how much people have ran or walked as live updates, so that was really inspiring. It definitely encouraged me to get out there because everyone was going for it.

“It’s an incredible amount because we’ve got such a small cohort in Podiatry. We all work really closely with the practice educators and I think that relationship is reflected in the overall success. It’s just amazing to see such a small team raise so much money.”

You can check out the Podiatry teams Movember fundraising page here

By Ross Clark      
Got an SHLS or GSBS story? Email me at Ross.Clark@gcu.ac.uk or message me on Twitter