Women tackling 53-mile run for Bolton Hospice

Lisa Harrop, aged 53, from Bradshaw, and Rona Ricioppo, aged 61, from Egerton, will both be tackling the Threshold Series Race to the Tower in the Cotswolds on Saturday, June 25.

The Threshold Trail Series runs "ultramarathons", which tests runners to the furthest reaches of their abilities.

Race to the Tower, which Lisa and Rona are participating in, will start in Stroud and finish at Broadway Tower, being 52.4 miles long.

Lisa spoke on how important Bolton Hospice is to both herself and Rona.

She said: “The hospice has cared for people close to both of us.

“We’ve spent many an hour in the hospice and all hospices are in need of funds. We thought if we’re doing the challenge we may as well raise the money for the hospice.”

She spoke about the challenge that lays ahead for Rona and herself.

Lisa said: “The race starts at Stroud and goes over the Cotswolds and finishes at Broadway Tower.

“We’ll cover 6000 feet of elevation. There’s a lot of trail in it and we’ve opted to do it in one day.”

She described how Rona and herself had been training hard for the event, saying:

“We’ve been training hard. We run anyway, having been training with Harwood Run Club.

“We started trail running with the Sunnywood Project, another fantastic organisation.”

She added: “We did a run last week with them that was about 50 miles, over two days.

“This is just short of 53 miles – my longest training run in one day was 31 miles, which I did two weeks ago.

“It went really well and left me confident for this upcoming run.”

Lisa said how they’re going to get through the run, saying:

“I think so, there’s so many inspirational people out there, if they can overcome their problems then we’ve got no excuse to not go out there and get it done.

“It’s 70 per cent mental and 30 per cent training anyway.”

If you’d like to support Lisa and Mona’s efforts for the hospice, their JustGiving page link is https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/rona-ricioppo2.