Meet the Half-Marathon Record Breakers Supporting The Clatterbridge Cancer Charity!
They say not all superheroes wear capes, but who needs a cape when you have a Guinness World Record!
Meet dynamic duo Aileen and Sarah Kearney, who took on the Run Aintree Half Marathon in May 2021. Aileen and Sarah are part of a family of runners and are heavily involved in coaching endurance athletes through Wirral AC’s Endurance Programme. When they’re not focussed on coaching the next generation of runners, the family are all busy building on their athletic success. Looking to inspire the next generation of athletes, Aileen and Sarah decided to try and beat the Guinness World Record for the Mother and Daughter combined time half marathon record.
“Once we had decided on our challenge, we knew we wanted to run in honour of the families we know who are being personally affected by cancer. Clatterbridge Cancer Charity does amazing work locally to research cures, treat patients and support their families so it was the obvious choice for us. We started our training together as a two-woman team because of the social-distancing guidelines and as lockdown started to ease, we were able to structure our training with additional support from the Wirral AC Endurance Programme coaches. In a typical week in the 2 months prior to Run Aintree, we were running up to 70km!” says Sarah.
The Run Aintree Half Marathon took place on 9th May 2021, and saw over 400 runners return to Aintree Racecourse take on the challenge. Aileen and Sarah completed the Half Marathon in a combined time of 3 hours 6 minutes and 42 seconds, beating the Guinness World Record by over half an hour – with Guinness World Records officially approving their attempt just three weeks later.
“Raising money for Clatterbridge Cancer Charity made it all worthwhile and supporting such a meaningful charity helped to keep us motivated and inspired us to stay on track throughout our training. We did most of our fundraising through social media, and we received so much support from our family, friends, colleagues and fellow runners. To anyone who’s thinking about taking on a challenge for Clatterbridge Cancer Charity, we would say prepare well in advance, but take on challenges in partnership if you can. It really does help to keep you motivated and you can lean on one another for support when the going gets tough” says Aileen.
You may not want to set a new Guinness World Record, but if you want to join one of our running events then click here to take a look at some of the incredible challenges they have coming up.