Kevin Sinfield has completed his incredible Running Home for Christmas ultra-marathon challenge, despite suffering a serious injury just days before it began.
The 44-year-old took on his fifth challenge to raise funds for Motor Neurone Disease (MND) charities, which saw him seven ultra-marathons in seven consecutive days.
That immense undertaking is running 230 miles, an unbelievable challenge for anyone, and even more so given the Leeds Rhinos legend is doing it on a seriously injured leg.
Speaking to the BBC on the final day of the challenge, physiotherapist Dave O’Sullivan, part of Sinfield’s team, explained: ‘You can see here now as he’s running, he’s really dragging one of his legs. About 10 days before we started he picked up an injury
‘We had to get a scan, we had three different opinions and unfortunately he tore one of the biggest muscles for running and a few different injuries in there as well.
‘We’ve had a lot of support, he’s had an injection to try and speed up the healing of the muscles and he’s needed a few other interventions as well.
‘He’s done really well. He’s getting a lot of back pain now because of compensations and stuff like that. He’s just getting through it now. He’s just doing his best as he always does.
‘The grade muscle tear that he got, you shouldn’t be running yet, I’ll put it that way. So to do seven ultra marathons in seven days is pretty incredible.
‘This is the first year we had to say to him that there’s a high chance he might not be able to get through this. The fist 7km we were worried, to be honest with you. The fact he got through the first day, our confidence grew. The muscle is holding up, but he’s getting a lot of back pain on that side because of compensations.’
Sinfield set a target of £777,777 to raise this time around and that goal has been comfortable surpassed.
As he completed the challenge on Saturday afternoon the total raised for MND charities sailed past £1,000,000.
