19 mums, 50 marathons & £1.3K to help some of the most vulnerable women in our city

We are a group of ladies living in Bristol who wanted to start running or improve our running, we had independently signed up for Run 30 and Run 60 courses with an amazing community called This Mum Runs (TMR).

The courses run over an eight week duration and meet every Tuesday evening. There is a Run Maker from TMR who leads each session, setting the route, giving us running tips and guidance and just generally motivating us to run further and stronger than we currently can. More about the courses below, but suffice to say they are very much aimed at those ladies who are complete beginners or haven’t exercised for a long time.

Of course, come early March, these sessions were cancelled due to the COVID-19 situation, but although we could no longer run together, undeterred we stayed in touch on Whats App to encourage each other to get out and run or at least walk. Then one member, Jen said: “why don’t we see if we can run a marathon by adding up our individual runs and miles?”. “That’s a great idea,” we all said!!

Here we are four weeks later and we are approaching 700 miles which is nearly 25 marathons. London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Milton Keynes, Edinburgh - tick, tick, tick we have worked our way through them all and many others. Every night we send Jo our Run Maker the miles we have run or walked, (and in some instances “turbo biked”). She adds them up and sends back the days summary. Pleased with ourselves we go to bed and sleep, and then repeat the next day, Run/Walk, Eat, Sleep repeat….. or something like that :)

The point is, we are not experienced runners or super fit women, we are busy ladies and like everyone else in this situation are juggling - families, homeschooling, working, supporting others and a ton of stuff - but have found a way to motivate and support each other - to get out of the house and put one foot in front of the other and keep moving even if it’s just for a mile.

We are now setting ourselves the target of running over 1000 miles between us and completing more than 50 marathons and in doing so want to raise £1000 for our chosen charity which is one One 25. This is an amazing local charity that supports women in Bristol at high risk of violence, homelessness, and life threatening illnesses as they struggle to survive on Bristols streets. The COVID-19 situation is of course impacting the charity so much in terms of raising essential funds and the women they support being even more vulnerable at this point in time.

The team: Denise, Becky, Jen, Hannah, Linda, Rachel, Sheena, Claire, Sarah, Leeann, Cara, Sam, Jules, Suzanne, Charly, Maria, Vicky, Jacqui and Jo

This Mum Runs Run 30 Course

This Mum Runs Run 60 Course

Source: https://www.justgiving.com/team/GSMarthonrunners