Fitness fans in Preston get moving to stop the lockdown ruining their annual fund raising drive

The group from Our Lady and St Edward's RC Church in Marlborough Drive saw their annual Christian Aid week collection fall victim to the coronavirus restrictions, but decided to start a fund-raising drive online instead.

Hilary Smith had decided to walk four miles a day to support the fund and one of the group, teacher Anna Moir, was due to take part in the Edinburgh Marathon which has been cancelled so decided to make exercise the focus of the sponsorship along with the rest of her family .

The JustGiving page was set up by Emma McGrath who usually co-ordinates the Christian Aid door to door collection, herself a keen runner who is a regular at Preston's Park Run at Avenham Park. She completed a five kilometre run each day during the week and the team has raised more than £1,300.

Emma said: "Hilary Smith got us started with her challenge to walk 10 lots of four miles in April, then I joined in. I have co-ordinated the envelope collection in our parish for several years so felt a need to do something to replace it this year. We could not be more pleased with the support we have received to date."

Anna Moir said: "Normally my family helps with the envelope collection for Christian Aid Week, so we wanted to do something. I was due to run the Edinburgh Marathon but it was cancelled, so the four of us decided to do activities and called it the Moir Mega Marathon."

The idea was for Anna, her husband Frazer and daughters Kate and Beth do do 26.2 hours of various forms of exercise to match the number of miles in a marathon. It ranged from running, dancing, cycling, online classes and walking to trampolining. But during the week, they ended up doing 34 hours and 40 minutes.

If anyone wants to donate, the page can be found at www.justgiving.com/fundraising/olse-fulwood