Rugby star expects to suffer on epic charity run

One of Britain's most successful athletes has told China Daily he wants to experience suffering when he embarks on an epic 24-hour charity fundraising run, beginning on Monday.

In his playing days with the Leeds Rhinos rugby league team, Kevin Sinfield, 41, won seven Super League Grand Finals and the knockout Challenge Cup twice, captaining the team in one of the greatest periods in its history.

Two years ago, one of his former team-mates, Rob Burrow, was diagnosed with the incurable neurodegenerative condition motor neurone disease (MND), the disease that afflicted world-renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, which is also known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in North and South America.

According to the International Alliance of ALS/MND Associations, each year, worldwide, 140,000 new cases are diagnosed, which works out as 384 new cases every day, with 90 percent of cases being sporadic, as opposed to inherited.

A year ago Sinfield ran seven marathons in seven days to raise 77,777 pounds ($105,000) for research, but ended up raising 2.7 million pounds.

Now, 12 months later, he hopes to complete a 101-mile (162-km) route from Leicester, where he now works, back to Leeds, with the distance broken down into 24 hourly chunks, with minimal recovery time, to raise money for the MND Association and the appeal to build The Rob Burrow Centre for Motor Neurone Disease in Leeds. The extended distance gives the challenge its name, The Extra Mile.

"I want it to be horrible, I want it to be unpleasant," he said. "We wanted this to be challenging, people don't support it and the media don't give it airtime if it's not a challenge. People will look at this and say 'I'm not sure he can do this'－I'm not sure I can do it myself, but I do know I'll give it everything."

Sinfield will have the backing of a highly specialist support team as well as two friends, David Spencer and Chris Stephenson, who will attempt to complete the trek with him, and says he is well aware that he is stepping into the unknown, with his previous longest run having been 52 miles.

"Doing it every hour is probably tougher, as there will be no opportunity to sleep," he explained. "Can we get out of the chair and keep going again? A lot of my rugby training was interval-based, so I'm aware of that and the need to keep going and return to the starting line. My experience provides me with the best psychological training I could have for something like this."

Sinfield, who completed a degree in sports and exercise science during his playing career, ran the London Marathon in early October, meaning he has had just six weeks to prepare for the step up, with research showing that anyone attempting such a challenge should allow six to nine months. "One thing for sure, if you go after it (running) crazily you'll get injured, so we've had to be smart," he said. "A big part (of the challenge) is mental… we won't know until we're 18-20 hours in… but we have a team who all know the buttons to press, so when we need a pick-me-up or a laugh, we'll get it done."

Burrow, 39, was famous in his playing days for being the smallest player in Super League, and together with former Scotland rugby union international Doddie Weir and soccer player Stephen Darby, has been one of the driving forces behind a huge increase in public awareness of the disease in the United Kingdom, supported by fundraising events like Sinfield's challenges.

Recently, their campaigning resulted in the government announcing fifty million pounds' worth of funding for research into the disease.

"When I heard that news, I thought'do I have to run now?'," Sinfield joked. "That money will make a huge difference, and without the campaigning of Rob, Doddie and Stephen, and them being so vocal and courageous, I don't think it would have come through. But the reality is yes I do have to run, because that money only covers half the issue. We want to find a cure, things that enhance people's lives and keep them on this earth a bit longer, but other side is the kind of support that the money isn't for, so we need to keep banging the drum."

Sinfield said Burrow thought it was "hilarious" that his friend was pushing himself to the physical and mental limits once again, but said what he would endure for 24 hours was nothing compared to the suffering of those living with MND.

"We don't have MND but we're going into a dark place and we don't know what awaits us, but we're prepared to go there," he said. "To see everybody who has been challenged by MND willing to go to those dark place is pretty powerful, so we'll give it our best shot."