IT IS one thing running seven marathons in seven days.

But it is quite another when you are doing it virtually barefoot.

That is the challenge Andy McGhee, who has never run a marathon, has set himself.

The father-of-four, from Eastleigh, has enlisted friends Dylan Moore and Haig Youens, from Hamble, for the mammoth distance raising money for a hospital unit that helped one of his own children.

The group will set off on the 190-mile 7 x 7 Challenge from Cornwall on September 21 and end back in Hamble on September 27.

Setting off from Rock, the group will head west passing through Launceston and Exeter along the coast then through Ringwood and Burley.

The final day will see them cover 26.5 miles setting off from Burley, passing through Lyndhurst, then on towards Totton, through Southampton and finally down the Hamble peninsula ending at Hamble.

Dylan, 40, of Westfield Common, an IT Consultant, and Haig, 38, of Coach Road, Hamble, a marine engineer along with Andy love to run but none of them have ever run two consecutive marathons let alone seven in a row.

Andy, a strength and conditioning coach and personal trainer who has his own gym in Hamble, had initially tried to run completely barefoot.

But this proved impossible so he will be wearing a 4mm rubber sole attached to his feet with string to protect his feet from glass.

But despite this, he has found the friction of not wearing shoes extremely painful.

Andy tried out his new alternative footwear at the recent Southampton Half Marathon, which provoked plenty of outrage from runners as he passed them in what they thought were “flip flops”.

He completed it but said it had proved a wake-up call for just how tough the challenge will be.

“I’m actually quite worried,” said Andy, 37, of Tinning Way.

“It’s a question of my feet surviving – I don’t think I’m worried about the conditioning side of it.”

But no matter what pain Andy goes through he has no intention of stopping as the cause is one close to his heart – the Paediatric High Dependency Unit at Southampton General Hospital.

This was where Andy’s son Jude, now four, ended up having been rushed to the hospital after suffering a severe asthma attack in 2013.

The resuscitation team brought his oxygen levels under control and he spent seven days in the unit.

Andy said; “Giving something back to the hospital is my way of saying a massive thank you.

“Hopefully it will go some way to helping other children in the future to receive the specialist care, which if it hadn’t been there for Jude, I would be telling a very different story today.

“It’s about the children there and bettering their lives that I care about. It’s just a bit of pain – it will be over in a week.”

To sponsor the challenge visit justgiving.com/bare7x7challenge.