A Kendal endurance athlete is running coast to coast this weekend in what he describes as a warm-up for a massive charity effort over the coming year.
Alex Staniforth is leading an attempt to raise £500,000 for the mental health charity Mind Over Mountains.
His route for this first challenge will take him from St Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay in Yorkshire. He starts on Friday morning at 8am and aims to complete the 300km run, with an ascent of over 8,000 metres by Sunday evening.
He has completed many climbing and endurance challenges, but the Coast to Coast route is almost twice the distance he has ever run before.
Alex said: “We have set ourselves the ambitious target of £500,000 because we really want to increase the work of the charity to meet the growing demand for mental health support, especially for young adults.”
Alex is a record-breaking adventurer, ultra-runner, author and charity founder who is no stranger to overcoming challenges. At 29, he has already survived the two biggest disasters in Mount Everest history as a teenager.
However, he said, his biggest challenges have been closer to home with depression, anxiety, epilepsy, stammering and bullying since school.
Alex is now committed to helping others achieve their own Everest. He has raised over £100,000 for charity, become the fastest person to climb all 100 UK county tops, written two books and founded Mind Over Mountains in 2020.
He is now fronting the campaign called Project 500. It is a call to action for mass participation – seeking people, organisations and schools to get involved and create their own fundraising challenges or events to help support mental wellbeing.
The target for reaching £500,000 is June next year, which will be Alex’s 30th birthday.
He said: “Sadly, too many young adults will not reach that birthday milestone as suicide is the biggest killer among under-35s in the UK.”
As one way of tackling this, evidence consistently shows a positive relationship between spending time in nature or exposure to nature and good health and wellbeing.
Mind Over Mountains organises walks and weekend retreats in places like the Peak District, Lakes and Welsh mountains.
The charity is increasingly working with social prescribing link workers, who are based within primary care networks and at GP practices. Patients can then qualify for free or heavily subsided places on walks and retreats, funded by the charity.
Ian Sansbury, chief executive of Mind Over Mountains, said: “Without support from the charity sector, the NHS simply can’t keep up with demand.
“Our ambition is to make nature- and activity-based responses to wellbeing the norm, rather than the exception, in mental health care and support. We will be looking on the new government to help deliver on this.”
