Coventry man ‘runs his lifetime’ for local lifesaving air ambulance

Sixty-year-old John Pugh from Coventry has completed his ‘Run My Lifetime Challenge’ and raised over £2,000 for the local Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance (WNAA).

Starting his challenge around Draycote Water in June 2019, John decided to undertake six 10K runs– one kilometre for each year of his life– across five different courses and four counties.

John, originally from Nuneaton, is the Managing Director of Coventry-based Loveitts Estate Agents who, as a business, chose WNAA to be their Charity of the Year in 2019 raising around £6,000.

“Loveitts had already raised such a great amount for the lifesaving service but I also wanted to do my bit for them, and as this coincided with my 60th birthday, I just set myself the challenge of running one kilometre for each year of my life to see how much money I could raise in sponsorship,” said John.

John set himself a modest target at the start but soon raised it to £1,700 when he learnt it cost the charity this amount for one rescue mission.

“This cost came as a total shock to me, as well as learning that this vital charity gets no Government funding and is totally dependent on donations from the public,” said John.

“I was particularly inspired when I visited the air ambulance team at their base in Baginton to get more of an insight into all the great work the charity does for our community, and this meant a lot to me because at Loveitts the community is at the very heart of everything we do,” he added.

John completed his last 10K run in March with the Unofficial Regency 10K and raised £2,180 for the lifesaving service which is set to acquire two new replacement aircraft early next year.

On behalf of WNAA, Laura Harrington Sage added: “We’d like to say a huge thank you to John for his amazing fundraising efforts in raising £2,180 for WNAA.

“The money he’s raised will help our service to continue saving lives in the local community and further afield, and we can’t thank him enough.”