Childhood friends from Wellesbourne taking on running challenge to help spread awareness for men's mental health

Two childhood friends from Wellesbourne are taking on a running challenge this month to help raise awareness and money for a men's mental health charity.

Josh Willis and James Pomeroy are currently in the midst of their 150-miles running challenge.

The pair are aiming to complete their challenge by the end of February and are doing to in aid of Movember, which is a men's mental health charity.

Speaking about what inspired them they said: "We both have been affected by mental health and we both want to promote that no matter how small you’re problems may seem that you can speak out.

"We both play a lot of football and we also believe that it is not spoken about in football, and especially at the moment due to lockdown, with football being played, the amount of men struggling silently must be lots.

"We just want to show that if us two genuine lads can talk about it then anyone can.

"We are both generally quite fit and saw a challenge of 150 miles in six weeks but we thought that we should try and push ourselves even more and that’s why we are doing in in four weeks rather than six."

Josh and James said raising awareness is a key reason behind their challenge.

They said: "We really want to spread awareness about men’s mental health and we both feel we have the experience and power to do that through our Instagram (@mensmindsuk).

"Through that we would like to reach as many people as possible to make sure that no matter you’re age, gender, social background or race you can feel confident to speak out about you’re problems and then find ways to help yourself.

"On our Instagram we post daily content of the runs we are completing, along with times and photos, but also motivations techniques and quotes and ways you can help yourself and others with mental health."

Talking about how the challenge is going so far, Josh and James said: "We are going well, it’s been seven runs so far reaching just under 60 miles, so we understand how hard it’s going to become as we are not even half way there.

"But we are feeling good, we haven’t once felt out of breath during the runs, but it is starting to take its toll on the legs and we are using every form of recovery we know to stay in the best shape possible to continue up until the end of the challenge.

The pair have also been raising money for the charity and have already surpassed their initial fundraising target of £1,000.

They said: "We initially set a target of £1,000 but we reached that within a week, we then set a target of £1,500 but have bypassed that and now we are looking to hit £2,000, as of Wednesday afternoon we were at £1,545 from 100 people donating, and we appreciate every single of them.

"We are also both planning on putting some in at the end of the month as well."

To follow Josh and James' challenge and to see their posts search @mensmindsuk on Instagram

To donate go to: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/joshandjamesmensmentalhealth