Sainsbury's chief exec Justin King completes Sport Relief runs in New Barnet (From Times Series)

Sainsbury's chief exec Justin King completes Sport Relief runs in New Barnet

11:00am Sunday 21st March 2010 in

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THE Chief Executive of Sainsbury's completed his own Sport Relief challenge at the store in New Barnet yesterday.

Justin King set himself the mission of running a mile at the location of 32 stores, one in each of their divisions in the UK, in just four days.

He completed the task in the rain by running two laps of a route around the store in East Barnet Road along with several members of staff from 15 local stores and newspaper publisher Richard Desmond .

After he had finished he told the Times Series: “It feels great to have finished it, I'm certainly a lot fitter than I was when I started in Belfast on Tuesday.

“We've been zigzagging down the country and so we were always going to end up in London and it's great to be here in Barnet.

“Obviously Sport Relief is something really close to our hearts and it's great so many of our coleagues have thrown themselves wholeheartedly into it.”

Today staff were collecting cash outside the store for the charity, while branch manager Richard Alexander also dressed up as a jester and had his head shaved to help raise cash.

He said: “We're hoping to raise about £3,000 from our activities here today. We've also been supported by local businesses which is nice as there's a real sense of community.”

Injured Barnet FC defender Paul Furlong also turned up with club mascot to lend his support to the cause.

He said: “I'm injured at the moment so rather than playing today I can come here and support the local community. I'm a local lad so it's nice to be able to be here.

“I watched Sport Relief on TV last night and you can see why it's so important, some of those stories and films are just heartbreaking.”