Team of friends conquer SAS fitness challenge in memory of Northampton's Daisy Ellis

A team of co-workers ran up, over and then back over the Pen Y Fan summit for charity.

A team of co-workers and friends battled extreme wind and rain this weekend to run up a Welsh mountain in memory of a brave Northampton woman.

Ex-soldier Jay Wood has beaten the 886-metre Pen Y Fan in Wales twice already. The hellish climb is a standard fitness test for marines and means running up over the peak and then back again in a gruelling four-hour ordeal.

But on Saturday, he convinced 10 of his friends and colleagues to run it with him.

They took on the Welsh peak on October 26 in memory of 23-year-old Daisy Ellis, a Northampton girl and friend of Jay's whose battle with stage IV sarcoma touched thousands of people after her death in September.

The team of friends (in no order) - Jay, tom, Lindsay, Michael, Lee, Curtis, Ollie, Callum, Nick and Ryan.

Jay, a 34-year-old business consultant from Abington, said: "I've known Daisy for years. Seeing her struggle has really brought it home for me. I've had other family members who have been affected or lost their lives to cancer. I just really wanted to do my bit."

Although Daisy passed away in September, Jay and his team drove on with their pledge to beat the Pen Y Fan and raise money in her name.

But when the squad arrived at the meeting spot on Saturday, they found the task ahead of them even more daunting than they imagined.