A fitness fanatic has raised thousands of pounds for Braintree's hospital after completing a marathon challenge.

Terry Haywood, 56, rowed an incredible 26.2 miles on a static machine at Dunmow Leisure Centre in a bid to raise money for the WJC Birth Centre at St Michael’s Hospital.

Mr Haywood had set a target of raising £2,000 but has now exceeded that figure and his hopeful further donations will be made to take that final figure over the £3,000 mark.

The personal trainer completed the row in just three hours and eight minutes and burned a whopping 2,500 calories in the process.

He said: "The game plan was to keep pace but I felt so strong at the beginning I went off too fast.

"The plan was to pick it up in the last ten thousand, but when it came to it, I didn’t have that pick-up in me. That last ten thousand was horrible. I focussed on the monitor and was pretty much oblivious to what was going on around me.

“I didn’t quite get the time I wanted – I wanted to get under three hours. But that puts me eighth in the world for my age so I’m not too disappointed.”

Mr Haywood has previous when it comes to taking on rowing marathons having done his very first one five years with little training behind him.

Despite having sworn to never undertake the challenge again, his wife Lindsay, a midwife at Braintree Hospital, encouraged him to have another ago and this time helped him with a training regime.

Mr Haywood added: "“I’d toyed with the idea (of doing another one) and then remembered how horrible it was.

"But my wife said, ‘How about if you did it for a good cause?’ And I couldn’t think of a better cause than raising money for the birthing unit.

“I’m going to have another go at the rowing marathon and try to get it under three hours.

"I’ll do that in March-April time. And I’d like to see how many burpees I could do in an hour. I did a burpee mile on an athletics track and did between 900 and 1000 burpees in that time.”