London To Cardiff Is A Newsworthy Challenge

Most people would probably think that a group of women running from London to Cardiff would be newsworthy.

That’s the equivalent of 165 miles (266 kilometres) which is going to be just under seven marathons in seven days.

But when a group of women in London started promoting their plan to the main daily paper distributed in London, there was no interest in featuring them.

Alexis Haycock-Hadden, Joanne Lea, Elizabeth Pencavel, and Lily Howson are the runners. They have been planning this run for six months now and have raised over four thousand pounds for a charity called Sport Relief which donates money to all kinds of causes around the world such as HIV, street children, sex workers, young carers, older people, and many others.

They tried to get interest from the Metro, but have “been blanked at every turn.” The main upset is that that paper prints lots of “stories about men doing similar challenges.”

• Sure, the men are probably doing much more but men CAN. What we are doing is huge for a bunch of young women. A lot of people who have shown us support have been women or work in women orientated companies, eg Sweaty Betty and Shock Absorber. This isn’t to say that we’ve had no support from men – the Food Doctor has been very generous for example – but that a lot has been from women.

So is a group of women running from London to Cardiff really not very interesting or exciting? Or are the local papers being outright sexist in their treatment of this group?

If you want to learn more about the London to Cardiff group check out their website here. You can also make donations to Sport Relief here.

They will leave on their run this Saturday, October 9th. Good luck ladies!