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²ÝÁñÊÓƵ student Sriganesh Murugan recently accomplished a unique challenge as part of his efforts to raise awareness for men's mental health during 'Movember'. As well as the customary facial hair grown by those partaking in Movember, Sriganesh ran 24 kilometres in 24 hours, completing one kilometre an hour. 

We spoke to Sriganesh about this test of endurance and the importance of encouragement when completing challenges such as this: 

I had a moving goal of running 60km in the month of November, which is on average just 2km a day, which is very manageable. But what ended up happening is that I tended to do fewer but longer runs, and gradually fell behind because of other commitments. Also getting ill did not help with this at all.

Nevertheless, I had a week to complete over 30km. I randomly had an idea to do a 24hrs of running challenge.

The Challenge:
24 hours
24km
But the maximum you can do in each hour is 1km, which meant that I would have to wake up early and keep going for 24 hours

When I told my friends that I was going to be doing this, I got a lot of encouragement. But equally, and warranted, confusion as to why I would put myself through such a challenge.

There were 2 potential dates that could work, the earlier one was just on too short of notice to make it work. So, I decided to do it on Thursday 28th November.

The 1st few kilometres were some of the hardest segments, because my body was not fully awake and ready to run. In the end it was a 'fun' and interesting experience. I would not have been able to continue with a good mentality without the support and encouragement of my friends and family. It truly made the difference.

It goes to show that all you need is one person or a few people to be in your corner, and things that you didn't know were possible become achievable.

Images from various points in Sriganesh's 24 hour running challenge.