The head of science at St Edmund’s RC School in Dover has been pounding the streets in preparation for the London Marathon next month.

Jim Mcneill's inspiration is 16-year old pupil Kelly Turner who is fighting an aggressive cancer with a £1 million fundraising campaign to get lifesaving treatment.

He has joined the campaign and hopes to raise a total £2,600 for the teenager in her battle with cancer.

He said on his JustGiving page: “A total 26 miles 385 yards is the distance. A nice target would be £100 for every mile run.”

Mr McNeill, a regular runner who had completed the race before, has taught Kelly science for two-and-a-half years.

Meanwhile Andy Stroud, of Dover, is due to finish going more than halfway up the world’s highest mountain for Kelly by this weekend.

Mr Stroud, 36, planned to cover 85 miles over 12 days at Mount Everest, starting at an elevation of 2,860 metres above sea level and reaching 5,545m.

This means covering 2,784m on foot.

He told the Mercury before leaving: “The weather can change quickly in the mountains but temperatures could get as low as -23c. It won’t be a walk in the park but I do like a challenge and the views will be great.”

The climb would be higher than Mt Snowdon and Ben Nevis combined. At Kala Patthar (Black Rock) he will be at more than five times the height of Snowdon.”

The venture is called TrekkingforKelly and the amount raise by this Monday stood at £663, 66% of his target, according to his JustGiving page.

Mr Stroud is a former member of the RNLI and an ex-merchant seaman for the British government research group British Antarctic Survey.

Fundraising efforts for Kelly have gone on for months with the total sum reaped now at 49% of the £1 million ($1.2 million) target. It was at £499,227 by Monday according to her JustGiving page.

Kelly, who turns 17 on Friday , needs the huge sum for specialist cancer treatment at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

She has a rare teenage cancer called desmoplastic round cell tumours and treatment is not available in Britain.

The condition affects only about 20 teenagers a year worldwide.

Chemotherapy in Britain has recently shrunk tumours, buying Kelly more time and allowing her to study for her GCSEs at St Edmund’s RC School in Dover in June.

If her condition worsens before that she will fly out for the surgery in America before that.

She had her 24th round of chemotherapy at the Royal Marsden Hospital last week .

Kelly meanwhile passed her driving theory test first time at Canterbury on March 8 and was due to have her first driving lesson later this month.

Mr McNeill’s run can be supported via justgiving.com/crowdfunding/jim-mcneill.

You can donate to Mr Stroud’s efforts via justiving.com/crowdfunding/TrekkingforKelly.