Eleven-year old superstar Ruaridh recently completed a thrilling 24 hour marathon challenge in dedication to his granny who has dementia. Ruaridh, his family and friends teamed up to run a mile, every hour until they reached 26.2 miles – raising more than £10,000 for Alzheimer Scotland. Since completing the challenge in April, Ruaridh has received overwhelming support and was named Little Champion of the Year in The East Lothian Courier Community Champion Awards. Ruaridh’s mum explains his amazing journey:
“The weekend of Ruaridh’s challenge was just amazing from start to finish. The support that he received from so many friends, family and locals was absolutely out of this world and made it all feel so special. The wonderful messages and donations to his JustGiving page kept coming in and we were so happy to have made just over £5000 for Alzheimer Scotland. It was beyond anything that we could have hoped for.
"Life went back to normal for us all and a week or so on from the challenge finishing I had a phone call from our local newspaper to let me know that Ruaridh was a finalist in The East Lothian Courier Community Champion Awards, in the category of Little Champion of the Year. We had a brilliant time at the awards ceremony. It was such an honour for Ruaridh to be nominated and then awarded the Little Champion trophy.
"Two days later Ruaridh was part of our village gala as he is a P7 pupil leaving shortly for high school. This is a huge day here and involves the kids all being smartly dressed and appearing on the stage together before they go around the village on floats led by a pipe band. As part of the speeches, one of our P7 mums wrote a lovely poem that mentioned each leaver by name and a little bit about each of them.
"When she came to Ruaridh, she very kindly paused and gave him an extra special mention for what he has achieved with his fundraising challenge for Alzheimer Scotland. Ruaridh was given a huge round of applause and as a result of this, our friend’s father who was also at the ceremony that day then made the hugely generous offer of doubling the funds that Ruaridh had already raised. When thanking him for his kind donation, he simply replied that he was just so full of admiration for the determination and desire that Ruaridh showed in doing that for his granny and that he just felt that he deserved some recognition for such an achievement.
"It is absolutely amazing to think that a challenge we started out thinking might raise a few hundred pounds has now made just over £10,000. We are beyond proud of Ruaridh and what he has achieved. He has taken it all in his stride and remains so modest. He loved doing his challenge even though it was very hard at times both physically and emotionally, but he never gave up and seeing him finish his last lap of 24 hours that day was one of the best moments of my life. We are just so lucky to call him ours and he has absolutely blown us away. I am truly honoured to be his mum.”