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There's 37 years' difference between the oldest and youngest family member but that hasn't stopped the Meredith clan banding together to take on the Torpedo 7 City to Surf this weekend.

John Meredith, his wife Carole and their son Aaron are three pieces of the puzzle. They will be joined by Carole's twin sister Andrea and her husband Paul, who is also John's brother. Their two children, Jenna, 23, and Christa, 17, will also take part in the 12km race.

"Our goal is to run the whole way, that's the plan," Carole said.

While she and Aaron are competitive, the focus of tomorrow's race is supporting each other and doing an activity in which the whole family is involved. John and Andrew have recently started running while Carole's completed three half-marathons. Andrea has been running for about four months and got the rest of her family involved not long after.

Carole saw a brochure for the City to Surf event and thought it would be a fun thing to do.

"I wanted to get my sister involved, she didn't really want to but she started doing a bit more running and I managed to convince her," Carole said.

Andrea said her first response was, "Do I have to?", before she joined Carole at Smiths Sport Shoes' training evening.

"I was quite surprised because I really enjoyed it and my husband asked if he could come along, then the girls decided to come too."

Paul, Andrea, Jenna and Christa live in Windermere and have been running for the past three months to build up their fitness for tomorrow's event.

Aaron, 23, lives in Cambridge and has been travelling to Tauranga for the past few weeks to take part in Tuesday night training.

None of the Meredith family has run the race before but everyone said they were looking forward to the challenge.

Andrea said timing wasn't on her mind and her goal was to finish the race without having to walk.

"We all run at different speeds and we talked about running together, but we're just going to do our own thing," she said.

"Aaron and Christa are a lot faster than us so they run together, and that's been great for both of them."

Since Christa started running, she has become more motivated towards sport, and last week enrolled in the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic sport and recreation course for next year.

And as the Merediths count down to race day, there will be some nerves, Andrea said.

"But we've done all the hard work, so now all we've got to do is have fun."