A TEENAGER from East Kilbride has earned a Guinness World Record after smashing a charity race up Mount Kilimanjaro.
Harvey Mitchell-Divers won the World’s Highest Endurance Race in July.
The 17-year-old emerged victorious in the half-marathon as part of the Uhuru Peak Challenge up the world’s highest freestanding mountain.
As if that achievement wasn’t enough for the super-fit young athlete, Harvey also finished second in the world’s highest vertical kilometre element of the race.
This stage of the challenge involved a tough 3.5km run with 1000 metres of vertical climb to the summit of Kilimanjaro.
Harvey raised over £2,300 for The Brain Tumour Charity in memory of his former football coach, Dougie Craggs, as part of the event.
Following the trip, Harvey said: “After five pretty brutal days of hiking between four-to-six hours per day, I managed to complete the vertical kilometre in just under two-and-a-half hours – a climb that would normally take anywhere between four-to-six hours.
“I then began the half marathon descent from the summit, which took me three-and-a-half hours – a hike that usually takes one or two days to complete. Running all downhill for this long was absolutely grim, but I pushed through.
“Dougie Craggs is the real reason I took on this challenge, and I hope that I have done him and his family proud. When I felt like giving up, I remembered why I was here and I stuck it out, got the job done and never gave up.”
As part of Harvey’s training for the brutal trek, the teen used UWS’s state-of-the-art environmental chamber. This helped him to acclimatise to the conditions he faced. It is only one of two in Scotland.
The World Spartan Champion for his age group worked with Professor Chris Easton at the facility, using the chamber to replicate the environmental extremes he would face on the challenge.
Chris Easton, Professor of Exercise Physiology and the Head of Sport & Exercise at UWS, said: “Everyone at UWS is incredibly proud of Harvey for taking on this unbelievable challenge.
“Taking part was inspiring enough, but to have performed so well is incredible. Harvey has ambitious plans for more challenges in the future and everyone at UWS would be delighted to work with him again to help him prepare in any way we can.”
