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Last weekend saw the boys from HJRM (Durnford House) don their House colours for a 24-hour marathon where they competed in 12 different sports. Pre-Covid, the event had been an annual tradition for the House, with the pupils playing squash, rackets and Eton fives, but this year they decided to tackle a plethora of different sporting events. Divided across different year groups, the green team faced the purple team from 6pm on Saturday to 6pm Sunday in everything from football to chess and croquet to rugby.

The marathon was driven in large part by B Blocker David Doughty who ensured that a new event kicked off every two hours, many of which were livestreamed to parents. Toby Berryman kept the Twitter feed updated with plenty of pictures and details of the competition as it unfolded. Toby described the four back-to-back hours of football and rugby in the heat of the afternoon as “particularly gruelling” with sun cream applied by the gallon!

As well as being great fun, the main aim of the marathon was to raise money for charity. The House dedicated the funds raised to all five of our Eton Action charities for this academic year: Ace Africa, The Teenage Cancer Trust, Glassdoor Homeless Charity, Schoolreaders, and The Felix Project. At the time of writing HJRM have reached their target of £2,400 and can be very proud of their effort, though apparently it was a bit of a struggle to get up at 4am for games of squash!

In the end, the greens took the win with 13 points to 11 over the purples. The House celebrated the marathon with four of one’s five a day, namely chicken katsu curry, chips, Coca-Cola and ice cream! The boys would like to extend their thanks to their House Master Mr Maclennan, and Dame, Betsy Willey, both of whom cajoled, chivvied and encouraged them throughout!

If interested, you can still donate to their fundraising page here and see more details from each event at their marathon twitter page here.