Dubai: 5-time Guinness World record holder, educator takes on challenge to run 180km in 5 days

A Dubai-based educator took on a unique challenge last week – running 30km each at six schools to encourage students to take up physical activity. Lee Ryan, who is the manager of Sports Excellence at the Cognita Middle East group of schools, undertook this initiative as part of the Dubai Fitness Challenge (DFC) and is hoping that this will inspire his students to be more active.

“It has been an incredible experience to run at various schools and meet the students,” he told Khaleej Times. “Most of them don’t understand when I say I am running 30km. So I translate it into a figure they can understand – that is about 30 times around your sports field and they are just astounded.”

Starting from 6am in the morning, Lee ran for approximately four hours within the gates of each school from November 11 to 15. With this initiative, he also raised awareness and support for the Sparkle Foundation that helps children in Malawi to get access to education.

He said that, in all the schools he ran at, students came out in large numbers to cheer him on and some even ran short distances with him. “Many of them brought placards to support me,” he said. “Some brought me juice or water. Some groups of students, parents as well as enthusiastic teachers ran with me for a short distance. I just wanted them to watch what I was doing, think about it and go back home to attempt running at least a few kilometres.”

According to Lee, his mission was to get students away from gadgets and screens. “I am a father of two and I know how much technology and gadgets influence children,” he said. “I want more students to take up sport and outdoor activities. It is extremely beneficial for their development and I think as a community, we should be striving to get our children outdoors.”

Lee chose six schools belonging to the Cognita group around Dubai to complete his mission. Since he wanted to finish running 30km each, on Thursday, the Briton ran a total of 60km at two different schools. “In the morning, I ran at Repton Al Barsha where over 1000 students came to support me,” he said. “I finished just before 10am and then headed to the office where I refuelled. Then at 4pm, I went to the Royal Grammar School Guildford Dubai where families joined in the school’s glow run. It was a fantastic experience.”

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