I’m always looking for charity challenges to do as if it motivates me AND raises money for a charity it seems pretty win/win to me. So when I saw the Pretty Muddy run was coming back to near me this year I was always going to sign up.

I’ve done the Pretty Muddy run twice before, once on my own back in 2014 and then with my best friend in 2017. It is definitely more fun in a group but unfortunately nobody was able to make it this time so I decided I would just do it alone (it was pretty short notice and a bank holiday weekend what did I expect?). So I put my pink war paint on and off I went.

If you’ve never heard of Pretty Muddy, it is a 5k run to raise money for Cancer Research UK broken up with obstacles along the way, and yes you guessed it those obstacles are muddy. There are inflatable things to climb over, webs to crawl through, space hoppers, tunnels to crawl through and the finisher which is always a giant inflatable slide.

This was the first year I’ve ever done Pretty Muddy when running has actually been on my agenda. This impacted me in two ways, one I was feeling confident I could run at least most of the course, and two I was already tired because I did a 5k the day before too. However, when we got started (without the usual warm up and in the rain), I decided to just go for it and do what I could.

It is definitely not the sort of race where it matters how long it takes to finish or how many people finish before you, however, I was determined to really push myself as I’ve always been disappointed after finishing. So this year I was over the moon when I finished 3rd and was the 1st woman over the line! I was pretty damn muddy too! Even to the point my Apple Watch stopped working at 4K.

Obviously it was for a good cause and I’m going to leave my fundraising page open for the next few days so please if you can donate to Cancer Research UK press this link here and let’s beat cancer together!!