RADIO and TV presenter Vernon Kay says his body is battered after running 116miles to raise over £4.3million for BBC Children in Need — but reckons fan support kept him going.
After reaching his four-day ultra marathon finishing line yesterday, the 49-year-old Radio 2 star confessed: “I’m on so many painkillers I’d keel over if I had a pint.”
Around 400 people, including his mum and dad, cheered him into the Bolton Wanderers football stadium in his home town as he completed the feat. But he had to settle for a phone call from wife Tess Daley, who is in Blackpool to host the Strictly Come Dancing show.
Vernon said: “We have raised £1million a day. Never in a million years did I ever expect that. Physically, I am shot. Both big toenails are coming off.
“My right Achilles is swollen and my right knee is wonky. I never want to look at my sports watch again.”
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Vernon started the challenge in Leicester on Tuesday. Thousands of fans cheered him along the way and he revealed: “In my phone I have 57 playlists and I have not listened to one song. People got me through. A man walking his dog said to me, ‘You said something on the radio when you started. I was in a really dark place and you managed to give my son his dad back.’
“I am on the top of Kinder, I am freezing, I can’t see more than 20 feet in front of me and I have just realised that me being on the radio means so much to this man. That gives you a boost.
“There was a lady who stopped by the side of the road. She said: ‘Two weeks ago I lost my husband and I’ve just been told I’ve got terminal cancer.’
“Then we had a lady who had just lost her baby. She threw her arms around me and was crying in my arms. All these special stories pushed me along.”
The trek saw Vernon run through Leicester and Derby before going through the Peak District, Stockport and on to Manchester and Bolton.
But he told The Sun he struggled after the hike up the Peak District’s Kinder Scout — 636 metres (2086ft) up.
He said: “We really hit the wall. I just couldn’t get any positivity. I said: ‘Can we stop here, spend the day in bed and maybe start at midnight Thursday?’
“They said: ‘That’s not going to happen.’”
You can still donate to Vernon’s challenge at bbc.co.uk/vernon
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