THREE friends who are running the Yorkshire Marathon for the Great North Air Ambulance have raised more than £1,000 in only a week.

The Press reported last week that Connor Stainthorpe and his friends Sam Harrison and Liam Broadhead, all 20, are in training for this year’s marathon in York in October after Connor’s dad, Derek, 50, almost died in a motorbike crash.

He was riding his Triumph Tiger motorbike along the B1222 between Cawood and Kelfied when his front wheel skidded and he left the road and hit a signpost.

The air ambulance took him to Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield where he was treated and had to stay for a month. The fundraising effort is Connor’s way of thanking the service.

He said: “With gift aid we have raised about £1,400 already. We did mountain biking at the weekend and a ten-mile run so I am aching like hell and I can’t move, but it will be worth it. We start our proper training programme in April.

“It’s absolutely fantastic that we have raised so much so quickly and I would like to thank everyone who has donated so far.

“We have got ten months to go and we have got such a large percent of our £3,000 target, it’s absolutely mental.”

The crash happened in March 2010 when Mr Stainthorpe was 46 and Connor was 17 and studying for his A-levels.

The crash left Mr Stainthorpe, from Kelfield, with a punctured lung, a broken arm, broken shoulder, six broken ribs and a dislocated knee. An emergency paramedic had to put an air hole into his lung at the roadside so he could breathe before he was flown to hospital.

Mr Stainthorpe, who is married to Joanne, 49, and works as a printer in Leeds, said it had been a long struggle with various operations leaving him with five metal ribs and a metal plate in his arm.

To donate go to justgiving.com/connor-stainthorpe or text the code GNAA93, your name and amount to 70070.