Sheffield mum reveals how she celebrated incredible 100-mile-run to raise money for children's cancer ward

Sheffield mum Julie Bembridge ran the 103 miles in 25 hours 20 minutes, arriving back at the start and finish line at Sheffield Children’s Hospital’s cancer and leukaemia ward, on her 51st birthday.

And the nurse celebrated as you’d expect afterwards – with a well-deserved Chinese, two gins and some much-needed sleep!

Julie has worked as a nurse at Northern General Hospital, and decided she would complete the ultrarun after her 16-year-old son, Stan, was diagnosed with leukaemia.

Julie said: “I was in the clinic when they announced that the next fundraising project was for the ward refurbishment. I said to Stan then that I’m going to run 100 miles to fundraise for it.

"I have done some ultra races before but the furthest I’d ever been was 53 miles, and I’d never run through the night before. It was a lot of training, the biggest week was 17.5 hours. You have to plan to eat a picnic whilst on the move.

"I read a lot about really long events and how you can feel real lows during them, but I never felt like I wasn’t going to finish. I was giving it 110 per cent in training. I went into this really seriously, knowing it was going to be so public.”

Julie has so far raised over £22,000 for the ward, but the project is set to cost £2.75 million.

She added: “£22,000 sounds like a lot but for this project it’s a drop in the ocean. A lot of kids live on the ward for months.”

Julie’s son Stan and daughter Kizzy, aged 14, along with hospital staff met her at the finish line after her run which was mainly off road through Dronfield, onto the Chesterfield Round route and then Sheffield Way before heading back to the hospital via Woodseats.

Julie said: “When I finished it was just a case of job done, because I had known about this for a long time.

“I stayed around the hospital for a bit. Then I came home, had a bath, ordered a Chinese, had two gins and went to bed.”

To donate visit justgiving.com/fundraising/100milesforstan.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​