Shropshire Star

Race for Life Pretty Muddy event at Weston Park - pictures and video

Pretty muddy and still smiling – 2,000 women took part in the third Race for Life Pretty Muddy event at Weston Park, raising about £50,000 for charity.

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The Pretty Muddy run

The women, from teenagers to grandmothers, completed five kilometre and 10 kilometre obstacle courses which included cargo nets, slides and of course lots of mud.

Organiser, Emily Thompson, said those taking part in the event on the Shropshire-Staffordshire border came from as far afield as Welshpool as well as from Wolverhampton and the West Midlands.

She said those taking part had a great time, despite grey skies on Saturday.

Now working for Cancer Research, Emily started fundraising when her mother, Denise Smith, who died in 2005, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Her father, David, is a cancer survivor, having been diagnosed in 2009.

“It is a very emotional event. There are so many people who take part in memory of friends and family or because they are cancer survivors,” she said.

“One of those I spoke to, Jo Griffiths , told me she was taking part after her treatment three years ago for breast cancer, which took the lives of her grandmother and her mother. Stories like that are typical.”

It is holding its traditional, non muddy, Race for Life runs in Telford on May 21 and Shrewsbury’s Quarry on June 11.