A man is taking on a gruelling 300-mile run later this month carrying a teddy bear the entire way – and it's for a very poignant reason. Gareth Jones is hoping to run 300 miles from Conwy along the Cambrian Way to Cardiff in memory of three-year-old Harri Stickler who died following a battle with cancer.
Gareth, 32, is taking on the challenge to raise money for Latch, a Welsh children's cancer charity which is based in Cardiff. He was inspired to fundraise for the charity after Harri's tragic death earlier this year. Harri, from Aberdare, was diagnosed with leukaemia when he was just six months old.
Harri was born eight weeks premature and was diagnosed with a very rare and aggressive form of cancer when he was six months old. He was given just a 20-30% chance of survival by his doctors. He had previously gone through chemotherapy and received a bone marrow transplant.
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Harri's parents, Bethan and Rhys Morgan, had launched a fundraising campaign to raise £1m to send him to Singapore or the USA to try new pioneering treatment, without which they feared their son would not make it to his next birthday in June. Sadly, however, Harri developed pneumonia before he could get further treatment and died on May 18.
Announcing his death and paying tribute to their so, Harri's parents Bethan and Rhys wrote on Facebook: "With a broken heart, our hero passed away today, he is now pain-free and at peace, he was brave, fearless and faced everything with his beautiful smile, go play with the ra-ras, miss you forever our beautiful special boy."
Gareth, who is also from Aberdare, is now running the 300 miles in Harri's honour and will be carrying a teddy of his the whole way. Gareth actually met the family in person for the first time last week. Speaking about why he wanted to do the challenge in Harri's name, Gareth said: "I was excised from the military and I was following [Harri's] journey.
"I was sitting there one night and I was thinking of another way to challenge myself. The whole community is getting behind this little boy so why can't I do the same? So I went on Google and I picked the hardest footpath in Wales and it just happened to be the Cambrian Way."
On August 19 Gareth will start his run at Conwy Castle and, over the next six days, will head towards Cardiff Castle – covering more than 300 miles. The arduous challenge will also see Gareth cover the Welsh three peaks – Snowdon, Cadair Idris, and Pen y Fan. So far Gareth has raised around £800 and is hoping to reach £2,000.
During the run Gareth hopes to cover around 50 miles a day but plans to cover even more on the first two days of his challenge at approximately 60-70 miles. He is hoping to beat the current record of six days and 14 hours to complete the route and is planning to finish it in under six days if all goes to plan. He added: "Even if it's five days and 23 hours I'd be happy with that."
Gareth, who only took up running a year-and-a-half ago during lockdown, has done a similar challenge before, covering 200 miles from north Wales through the Offa's Dyke path. With an extra 100 miles to cover on this challenge Gareth said he will be carrying one of Harri's teddies to remember why he is taking on the run.
"I went through some very dark places," Gareth said, speaking of when he completed his last challenge. "I thought if I was carrying a toy of [Harri's] when I hit those dark places and I always look at this toy and remember why I'm doing it and it will just give me that motivation to keep going."
Gareth said that Harri's death had a "massive impact" on the Aberdare community. He said: "Everyone was working so hard. There were Facebooks, there were Instagrams, there were fundraisers left, right, and centre and some amazing people have raised a lot of money."
He continued: "I thought by me doing this run in [Harri's] name [it] would kind of be like the final hoorah if you see what I mean. Hopefully give [the family] a smile and just carry on his name." Gareth said he was "nervous" to take on the challenge having only taken up running in 2020.
"Last year, when I decided to run 200 miles, it was completely on a whim," he said. "I had done no prior training to it at all and I didn't know what to expect. It was probably the hardest thing I've done in my life. But this time I've put training in to it because I know what to expect.
"I think that's the nervous thing about it – knowing when my feet are going to break, when my mind is going to break, and just waiting for them to happen. But overall I'm very excited to tell you the truth to be out there on my own again – just me and the wild."
Gareth said that he had been an addict and overweight in the past but turned his life around after joining the British Army in 2016. He added: "After joining the military and sorting my life out lockdown happened and I just couldn't stand it. I just had to get out of the house for my own mental health, my own sanity. So, I started running little by little every day. It was increasing my morale, it was really helping my own happiness and state of mind."
After raising money for charity through running Gareth, who was a corporal in the military, decided to start his own Facebook page called Mental Health Wanderer. He said: "Ever since I've been doing these crazy runs and challenges to help people come out of their shells and show people that you can come from being in the gutter to actually running 200 miles."
Gareth will also be visiting Latch's centre in Cardiff before he begins his 300-mile run. He said: "It's basically so when I do this run and I hit some dark places then I've got that to fall back on as well and know that, when I finish the run in Cardiff, that they're the reason why I'm doing this."
He added: "If one person is inspired by what I'm doing then that's what matters to me." Those wishing to follow Gareth's journey can track him through his Facebook page as he completes the 300 miles. You can donate to the fundraiser here.
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