Lily's Coast2Coast Challenge

In March 2023 I was diagnosed with anorexia. This completely broke me and at times my family and friends were unsure if I would be able to recover, but I was determined to try and recover. Every day is a struggle and it is not an easy journey but I am getting there slowly.

As part of my recovery, I had to create a vision board showing things that I wanted to be able to do when I was stronger. I wanted to run – sport had always been a big part of my life and I used that as a goal to recover. The thought of being able to try out for my school’s Coast2Coast team in 2024 was a huge part of my recovery. The Coast2Coast challenge is an 11-person 170-mile relay from St Bees to Robin Hoods Bay. I thought it would be an impossible goal as I hadn’t been to school for months and couldn’t even stay a full day without being completely exhausted.

I talked to my medical team about how important exercise and running was for me and they helped me to gain the strength I needed to run. I started running again in September 2023, after 6 months of no exercise, and I slowly built up my strength and stamina so that when the Coast2Coast trials came round in November, I felt able to try out. As well as running trials, we had to complete a written application explaining why we wanted to take part in the challenge. That was easy for me – I explained how much running helped me and how I needed this more than anything to maintain my recovery.

As part of the challenge, we raised money for a charity. We had conversations as a team about which charity we would raise money for. I was so grateful that my team chose Beat as our charity. I remember when we had to vote, one of my teammates said ‘I think we should go for Beat because it’s personal and important to Lily which means it’s important for all of us’. It felt unreal that we were running for a charity that I related to so much. And, it was so important for me to run for Beat because it gave me even more motivation to complete the challenge. I knew I had to do it for everyone who is struggling with similar things to me. My mum said that without Beat’s help during my illness, she wouldn’t have known how to best support me.

We decided as a team quite early that we weren’t worried about the time we took to complete the challenge, we just wanted to break the fundraising record. And we did – we raised £8,540! Knowing we have raised all that money for such an important cause feels so surreal, it means the absolute world to me. We still are extremely grateful to everyone who donated. Thank you.

The 26 hours of our challenge was the most amazing experience of my life. And it is an experience that we all would jump at the chance to do again. We all worked together as a team and supported each other. We needed that support most in the middle of the night when it was dark and raining heavily. Dragging ourselves off the bus for a 30-minute run in the middle of the night was hard but so worth it in the end. We couldn’t have done it without the teachers who supported us the whole way through. Even when we were tired and struggling to run they never stopped motivating us, and on the bus they made sure we ate and refuelled ready to go again on our next leg. My favourite run was my first leg. I ran down Wrynose with my teacher, who has supported me throughout my illness, and I wouldn’t have wanted to do it with anyone else. I felt like I could have kept on running and running. I felt so proud of myself when I thought about how far I had come.

As we got closer to the end, it started to feel real that we had nearly completed the challenge and that it would soon become a memory that we will cherish forever. We all ran the last mile together to Robin Hoods Bay.

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