Two Perth men have raised over $5000 for the mental health charity 20Talk at the annual Herdsman ultra-marathon over the weekend.    

Twenty-five-year-old Mitchell Grey and 23-year-old Madoc Plane ran a combined total of almost 300 kilometres in under 48 hours.

The men say they were primarily motivated by challenging the stigma around mental health.  

“At this time last year, I was going through a bit of a struggle myself, so I saw it as a good opportunity to fundraise,” says Mr Grey. 

Grey completed 25 laps of the lake, equivalent to about 168km. He says the event was a good opportunity to not only push his running ability but also raise money for a good cause. 

He says he has high hopes to continue participating annually.  

Plane says he initially had no intention of attempting the challenge but was eager to get behind a good cause and show support to Mr Grey.

“The most I’d run before was a half marathon, so I wasn’t really expecting much of myself to be honest” says Plane. 

“I set myself a little goal of about eight laps which is about 56km and then yeah we got there early, set up and ended up running 15 laps which is about 105km.” 

Plane says the support from family, friends and 20Talk pushed him to keep going.  

“Yeah, it was pretty special for me to be honest, I didn’t really think I could do that… to do it with Mitch there, a bunch of other supportive crew and for 20Talk, it was pretty special, ” he says. 

20Talk co-founder Lachlan O’Donoghue says initiatives like this are extremely important to the organisation.  

“These smaller personal fundraisers have pretty much been our lifeblood for our foundational years, they’ve really been the pulse keeping us going,” says O’Donoghue. 

The funds raised by the two young men are going towards developing and implementing prevention strategies at 20Talk. 

“It can go towards upgrading equipment we have down at the studio, it can go towards free first aid courses for young people and developing that mental health prevention course. It can go towards a whole bunch of different things, ” he says. 

The men still have active gofundme accounts to help raise funds for mental health.