Marist students and staff take on marathon challenge for charity!

If you happen to notice a lot of Marist College students and teachers out pounding the pavement near you this week, it's not just a coincidence.

Since yesterday (Monday), the Athlone secondary school has been staging a charity challenge, asking students and staff to walk or run as often as possible between now and this Sunday, January 24.

The 'Mega Marist Marathon' event is a competition to see which year group covers the greatest distance this week, and in the process it's also raising funds for Barnardos in order to help support children during the pandemic.

"We're asking the students and staff to challenge themselves and to try and accumulate as many kilometres as they can," said Rachel Corcoran, a PE teacher at the school.

She explained that each participant had to download a running App on their phone, such as Fitbit or Mapmyrun, and each time they go for a walk or run they have to track the distance covered.

They then send screenshots of each walk and run, along with their total distance covered, to wellbeing teacher, Eva Gregg.

Ms Corcoran said that, in addition to providing a challenge for the students and staff, the initiative would help keep them physically active during the current period of remote learning.

"Ordinarily, a lot of students would have walked to school in the morning, and after class would have got up and walked around the school building, whereas now most students are probably getting out of bed and getting into a chair beside the bed.

"So it's an initiative to get them physically active and hopefully it will boost their emotional and mental wellbeing for a few weeks until they get back to a little bit of normality."

She said that, when the initiative was explained to the students during their online classes last week, the reaction was very enthusiastic.

"I was explaining it to the third years on Microsoft Teams and the chat went crazy with people using #maristmarathon and #wearemarist. They really bought into it!" she said.

After the event concludes on Sunday, individual prizes will be awarded to the student in each year group that covers the greatest distance, and there will also be a prize for the best photo taken while completing the marathon challenge.

Explaining why Barnardos was chosen as the charity to benefit from the event, Ms Corcoran said: "With the schools closed at the minute, that is obviously having an impact on teachers and parents but also, significantly, on children.

"The way the lockdown was going to significantly impact on children was one of the main factors in why we went with Barnardos."

On social media, Barnardos said it was grateful to the school for organising this "amazing" initiative.

"Thank you for your support - it means so much to the vulnerable children and families we work with," said the charity.