An Aberdeenshire duo have raised more than £6,000 for charity after taking part in the London Marathon.
Childhood friends Dionne Winter and Julie Ann Marshall, from Laurencekirk, completed the gruelling 26-mile course, raising £6,432 for the Scottish Huntington’s Association.
For Miss Marshall, the race carried a special resonance with her mother suffering from Huntington’s.
She said: “My mum is living with the disease at the moment, so it’s something that is very important to me. Obviously, I am living with the risk of the disease as well and I feel it’s not a disease that gets a lot of publicity.
“The Scottish Huntington’s Association are quite a small charity, but they do an amazing job and great work for families in Scotland with the disease, so this felt like the right thing to do.
“They have really helped my family, so I wanted to give something back and raise as much money as possible.
“With having that family connection, it was very emotional running the marathon, and I was thinking, even when my feet were hurting, that this is nothing compared to what my mum deals with on a daily basis.
“That certainly spurred me on and kept me going.”
Despite neither women considering themselves runners, Miss Winter stated that the rigours of a brutal training regime were worth it to create the memories of a lifetime.
The 32-year-old said: “I hate running, I can barely run for a bus, so I definitely thought I had bitten a bit much off.
“We signed up in September, so didn’t have that much time to train, but we set off out running and the training was pretty brutal.
“In February, I was out running and I was going too fast down a hill and I went over on my ankle and tore some ligaments which stopped me training for six weeks.
“Right up to two weeks before the marathon, I was only running 18 miles, so the prospect of 26 was terrifying.”
Reflecting on the marathon, Miss Winter said it had been “one of the most memorable moments of my life”.
She added: “There were moments in the marathon that were incredibly tough, but a moment that will stay with me forever was when we went over Tower Bridge.
“I think I sang the whole way over, and interacting with the crowd, was just so memorable.
Miss Marshall added: “Crossing the finish line I couldn’t really believe it, because, even the day before the race, I still had doubts on whether I would be able to complete it.
“It was an amazing feeling and so emotional, but one of the most brilliant experiences.
“And to have raised the amount we have, it is beyond what either of us could have imagined.”
