A PAIR of friends are to run from Old Colwyn to London, before then running the London Marathon, later this year in the hope of raising £10,000 for a Colwyn Bay charity.

Gaz Rowlands, a joiner, and Sam Ranshaw, a personal trainer and sports massage therapist, will set off from Old Colwyn on September 22, and aim to have completed their 254-mile run to London by September 30.

Gaz and Sam, both 38, will then also run the London Marathon on October 2, all to support Happy Faces Children’s Charity in Rhos-on-Sea.

Funds raised by Gaz and Sam, who have been close friends since their school days, will go towards supporting Happy Faces’ work helping sick, disabled and disadvantaged children across North Wales by helping fund a minibus for them.

Both Gaz and Sam have raised money for Happy Faces on numerous occasions previously, including through running the London Marathon, but Sam expects this challenge, which has been put off in the past due to COVID-19, to be their toughest yet.

Sam said: “We were scheduled to do this before the first lockdown - we were doing it for Happy Faces to buy them a minibus, so we trained for six months, and then it (London Marathon) got postponed in March 2020, a month before we were due to set off (and then cancelled in August 2020).

“We trained again the year after and couldn’t do it - we’ve trained twice for it already, so it’s third time lucky!

“We’re basically doing a marathon a day from Old Colwyn, all the way to London, and then London will be the final marathon to crown it off.

“It’s about 264 miles, but a lot of the first few days are 35-mile days, so it’ll be quite a bit more than a marathon to start off with. This will be by far the hardest endurance test we’ve ever done!

“This is our sixth or seventh London Marathon, all for Happy Faces. We were just looking for something to test ourselves.

“We were going to do the Marathon des Sables (a six-day 251km “ultramarathon” in the Sahara Desert) but couldn’t get on it due to money. So over a few beers, this just came up!

“We were going to stay in tents originally, but then Ray (Herbert, owner and founder of Happy Faces) heard about it and said they’d get us hotels.

“It’s just anything to give back to the community; to the kids that need help to go out on day trips and have adventures themselves.

“It makes us feel good doing it, knowing it’s going to a good cause.”

To donate to Gaz and Sam’s fundraiser, and help them reach their £10,000 target, go to: www.justgiving.com/campaign/GazandSamEpicRun2022.

For more on Happy Faces, visit: www.happyfaceschildrenscharity.org.uk.