A YORK man has completed the remarkable challenge of completing seven triathlons in seven days.

Dave Burrows set out to complete the huge challenge in aid of Candlelighters, a Yorkshire charity which supports children with cancer and their family.

Fellow members of the Yorkshire Vikings Triathletes joined him for some of the 21 legs of his swimming, cycling and running marathon.

At the end, his efforts raised more than £1,300, well over his target of £500.

"The hardest part was probably motivating myself to keep getting up every day at 5am. I'm not really a morning person," said Dave.

Each day, he had to complete a 750-metre swim, a 20 km cycle and a 5 km run.

The IT manager nearly gave up at the start of the fourth day when he had only completed three sprint triathlons, but his teammates, friends and family pulled him through and on the seventh day, he set a personal best of 7 minutes 31 seconds for swimming.

Friend Craig Lawrence joined him on six days for the swim and bike legs but had work commitments on the seventh. Dave's father Mark accompanied him on two of the bike legs and Heather Kennedy of Selby leisure centre headed the support crew.

His wife Lucy, who got up early every morning to support him, said: ’I was thinking about how much one-week long event had turned our day-to-day life upside down.

"And I thought how much everyday life is turned upside down for those Candlelighters families. Despite Dave’s crazy idea to undertake this challenge, our daily lives had to continue and the same, on a much larger and harder scale, goes for those families too. Parents may still have to work, siblings will still go to school, relatives will muck in and pets will get walked. It made me as a wife and mother and us as a family sit back and think, and really appreciate the ‘normal’ family life and routine we have. And how lucky we are.’’