AN ATHLETE and endurance coach from Musselburgh is set to take part in a world-first sporting challenge to raise funds for charity.

Joel Enoch, of Denholm Way, is bidding to become the first person to complete four rounds of the global endurance event HYROX in a single day at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow on Saturday.

His efforts will raise funds for international children’s charity World Vision.

He will also support the St Andrew’s Children’s Society.

In HYROX, participants from all around the world compete in the same format – a one-kilometre run, followed by one functional fitness movement, which repeats eight times.

Joel’s charity event will require him to run 32km and complete 32 separate movement challenges over the course of about seven hours.

An event spokesperson said: “Despite HYROX experiencing remarkable growth with dozens of events all over the world and individual events seeing over 4,000 participants and 10,000 spectators – making it the world’s largest mass participation fitness race – no one has attempted to complete four rounds in one day.”

Joel, his wife Sian – a nurse at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh – and their six-year-old daughter Carys, a pupil at Stoneyhill Primary School, made their home in Musselburgh after moving from Leith in 2014.

Joel is a GB age-group athlete, coach and endurance sport and nutrition expert with more than 15 years of experience guiding and supporting athletes. He has coached athletes to European and World Championships and currently works for British Cycling as a Paralympic talent development coach. He is a writer, educator and, as an athlete, has won a World Championship medal as well as British and Scottish titles.

He said: “I’ve spent nearly 20 years competing in endurance sports and have been blessed to have raced all over the world and achieved may sporting ambitions.

“However, it has felt quite selfish at times and I want to use my fitness to help do something more valuable.

“In 2019, my wife and I partnered with World Vision’s CHOSEN project and I wanted to do more to support the great work they do.

“It also felt important to invest in our community here in Scotland and St Andrew’s Children’s Society came to mind, as both they and World Vision have been charity partners of our local church, Ps & Gs [in Edinburgh].

“We can only change the world for the better if we support and equip the next generation, so giving money to help children fulfil their potential felt like something I wanted to do.”

He added: “HYROX is a global functional fitness event that has burst onto the international scene in the past four years, in which participants are challenged to run eight one-kilometre runs, each separated by a functional fitness movement.

“The average time is around 1hr40m – the best complete a round in 60-70 minutes.

“No one is known to have completed more than two in a day, so my attempt to complete four is a world first for the event.”

Joel has been a successful triathlon coach, winning the award of Scottish Triathlon Coach of the Year, and helped set up the 2022 Scottish Triathlon Club of the year, Triworks Edinburgh.

He has competed at world and European age-group championships on 11 occasions over 24 years at standard distance triathlon, sprint distance triathlon and aquathlon.

Last year, he won a silver medal at the World Aquathlon Championships and also the British and Scottish Aquathlon Championships.

In 2021, he was also third overall in the Scottish Championships, despite turning 40 that year.

Go to dogive.com/campaigns/1369 to give support for Joel’s challenge.