THE New York Marathon is perhaps not the typical off-season activity for most footballers.

But for Carlton duo Jess and Sarah Hosking, it was a welcome challenge in the lead up to pre-season as they ran to raise funds for Interplast Australia.

Returning to Ikon Park after having crossed the finish line, the pair caught up with Carlton Media to chat about the race.

“We kind of decided about six months out that we were going to run the New York Marathon. It was for one of the charities that I work with called Interplast: we were ultimately raising funds for them,” Jess said.

“The marathon itself was pretty tough. I think leading into it, we sort of set ourselves on just wanting to complete it whether we had to walk or run,” Sarah added.

“We ran the whole way without stopping, except I think Jess spotted Mum and Dad in the crowd, waved them down and ran over to give them a hug.”

Interplast Australia is a not-for-profit organisation that sends teams of medical staff to countries across the Asia Pacific region to perform life-changing surgeries.

The twins managed to raise just under $10,000 through fund-raising efforts for the marathon, continuing the connection Jess began when she joined a team in Samoa last year.

“I was lucky enough to go on one of their trips to Samoa last year and got to see first-hands the type of life-changing surgeries they did do,” Jess said.

“So that was a massive driving force as to why I wanted to raise the money and thought the New York Marathon was probably a good one to do.”

Jess received a nomination for the Jim Stynes Community Leadership Award for her work with Interplast in addition to a number of other charities.

With their community work punctuating their AFLW careers thus far, Sarah is looking forward to building her involvement going forward.

“Jess has done a lot of charity work with medical groups and I’m sort of branching out and doing a few things with some of the homelessness groups,” Sarah said.

“It’s something that we both hold very strong in our hearts and really want to try and make an impact in the community. [We’re looking] to continue to do that with the charities that we work with now but also continue to expand that as well.”