WMN RUN X Maverick South Downs - October 29th 2022

We’re big fans of Maverick races. Not only are they extremely well organised, and in great, rural locations throughout the UK, they offer a variety of distances, meaning our community have a number of options to choose from when it comes to joining us for an adventure.

In October 2022 we will be taking on the Maverick Adidas Terrex South Downs and we’re excited to get as many of our community on board with us. You can choose from a 12K trail race, right up to a 53K ultra marathon, all on the beautiful South Downs. Take a look at full race details and all the distances on offer here.

What do I do next? Sign up to the race with the distance of your choice on the button below. If you’re a 2022 WMN RUN member, don’t forget to use your 15% discount code in your joiner email. Once you have signed up, head to our Heylo group here, where we will collectively sort travel, accommodation and keep track of who is running which race.

If you have any questions at all, please email us here.

London to Bristol: WMN RUN Strava Challenge

Join us on Strava from the 23rd of August until the 20th September and see how far you can get in four weeks as we challenge you to run whole or part of the distance from London to Bristol - 117 miles.

But that’s not only it, we will be gifting three prizes throughout the challenge which you can be in with a chance of winning:

• The quickest to complete the distance

• The most active

• Winner picked at random

You don’t have to complete the full distance to be in with a chance of winning, we’re just asking you to get running and join us.

Sign up here and we will invite you to the challenge on Strava.

Please note:

There are 25 places on the challenge and these spaces will be given on a first come first serve basis. You must be on Strava to take part. 

Looking back: The WMN RUN Youth Project

Something we have always wanted to do more of is to work with young people. With young women especially, there’s a huge drop off in exercise during secondary school, and we wanted to do something to help that, showing girls that movement can be used as a vehicle to uncovering a toolbox of positive, impactful life skills. When the opportunity arose to work with young people two years ago, we jumped at the chance.

Working with St Martin-in-the-Field school in Tulse Hill, Brixton, and supported by Nike, we were able to spend every Friday morning with 50 of the school’s female students. We had the pleasure of taking over their P.E class every Friday morning for over two months. The journey took the girls through weekly discussions and group runs, encouraging them to see movement as a positive, empowering force, as we worked towards their first 5K race 12 weeks later.

This film is shot and edited by Nick Carter of Bitter Creek.

Breca Swimrun

This year we thought we’d try something entirely new. The world of wetsuits and swimming caps is something a few of us have tried before, yet the world of swimming, running and racing was less so. In an attempt to encourage more women to enter this world of swim-running, Breca asked if we’d be willing to get some more women involved. So in August, 10 of us headed to the trails and waters of the Lakes and took on the sprint distance. During the race we were pleased to see so many women taking part, and were blown away afterwards to find out that over half those racing the sprint distance were women - 121 out of 218. A huge improvement on last year.

Breca’s races are strictly done in pairs with no less than a 10 metre distance, for both safety and morale. There are marshals at several points on course and plenty of kayaks in the water, so each of us felt safe and secure. The organisers did a great job of looking after all of the entrants, especially in less than ideal August weather and with course changes. Swimming in cold lakes in a new environment can be daunting, but our teams all had an exhilarating afternoon running the trails and swimming the waters of the Lakes and it’s something each of us would do again.

If you would like to find out more about swimruns or Breca, you can take a look at their website here.

Trail Blazers panel

In light of International Women’s Day, in March we held a Trail Blazers panel at Origin Coffee Roasters in Southwark, London. In order to champion women who are creating change and championing female strength, we invited three ladies to take part in the conversation; Run Equal campaigner Maud Hodson, Alex Paske of youth development foundation, Mintridge, and endurance cyclist and author, Emily Chappell.

Exploring everything from female empowerment, social change and the future and how we can all get involved, the evening, we hope, left those who attended with some seeds of inspiration, to feel able to make changes and inspire others to do so too.

All proceeds of tickets sold went to the Girls Gotta Run foundation, who do wonderful work to empower girls and young women in Ethiopia. You can find out more information about Girls Gotta Run here: http://www.girlsgottarun.org/

Emily Chappell, endurance cyclist and author

Alex Paske, Mintridge Foundation Director

Maud Hodson, Run Equal campaigner

All photography Liam PDB Walsh

We Fly LDN

In August 2018 WMN RUN and Track Mafia joined forces with Nike for two high energy events.

The first was held in The Mall West Car Park in Wood Green, North London. The specific aim of this session was to show how running can free you from the stresses of daily life and understand how running with friends and a team can make you faster.  For this session, we were also joined by the London Lionesses football team and radio presenter Julie Adenuga.

WMN RUN 100

In 2015 we began our journey and started our first project WMN RUN 100.

We set out to shake up the 80 : 20 male to female ratio that stood in Race to the Stones, an 100K ultra marathon that follows the route of one of the oldest paths in Britain with the option to run half or all of the distance. We wanted to level this imbalance out and create an equal footing. After many months of training, both together and separately, we took 52 women to the starting line of the race. These ladies achieved something that some primarily deemed impossible, and contributed to changing the ratio of male to female to 61 : 39.

Race to the Stones saw a change and our community saw its beginning.

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