A FITNESS addict is going to attempt to run 40km a day for 40 days before her 40th birthday, while raising as much money as she can for Walking With The Wounded, the WWF and Waverley Abbey School.

Sarah Rollins, who lives in Seale, having grown up in Farnham, is this summer starting on Saturday, June 4, going to attempt to run 40km a day before her 40th birthday, which is July 14. She has dubbed this the ‘404040Challenge’.

In December 2014 Sarah found a training programme online for a marathon, she was looking for inspiration having retired from GB Orienteering after 13 years.

In May 2016 she ran her first trail marathon, and then completed the South Down’s Marathon in June 2015 and the Leith Hill Marathon in October the same year.

The more she ran the more miles she was able to complete, therefore giving her a lot of ‘alone’ time to think and this is when the 404040Challenge was born.

She said: “I thought that I would like to do something to mark my 40th birthday.

“And suddenly I was thinking about doing 40km and why not for 40 days, finishing before my 40th birthday. Usually I get home and the oxygen returns to my brain and my ideas get something called ‘perspective’.

“So suddenly I have six weeks off work and starting on June 4, I am going to try to run for 40 days finishing on the day before my birthday.”

An ex-Army doctor, now working for the MOD at the regional rehabilitation unit in Aldershot, Sarah has seen at first hand the difficulties that wounded service personnel have to go through. Therefore she has chosen Walking With The Wounded as one of her three charities to raise funds for.

Her second charity of choice is WWF, World Wide Fund for Nature. “My son is nearly nine and he often talks about things that he has seen on the TV or heard about at school that upset him.

“Things like plastic in the oceans, loss of forests for palm oil, pollution, melting ice caps, climate change and it makes him sad” said Sarah.

“We have supported WWF since he was a little boy. Finally, I wanted to do something to help locally and my son’s school [Waverley Abbey] is trying to raise money to fund the building of new year six classrooms. The school is great with an emphasis on working hard and being active.”