Having fan girled and Instagram stalked Bryony Gordon for some time ( read all of her books often thinking “Ooo that’s me!” good bits and bad! ) when I saw that she was trying to get together a group of ladies to run the Vitality 10k in their pants I instantly thought YOLO! Why not!? This seems like a great idea.. and also, I might get to meet her ( can’t lie, this was the driving force! ) I had recently completed the VLM and was a bit lost, the marathon come down was real and felt I needed a new running challenge and event to look forward too.

I managed to rope in a few of my running club ladies who were also feeling brave and happy to join me – thank goodness!

To me the message of #celebrateyou is one that I 100% fully support and really, REALLY want to embrace. But as we all know it’s probably a lot harder than it seems, I know all of us women are AWESOME, our bodies are AMAZING and I am inspired by so many of you, who daily do fabulous things. Would I have ran in my pants 5 years ago, pre my two babies, three stone lighter, stretch mark free and with a lot less cellulite ironically no! I would never have had the confidence but growing those babies, birthing those babies and everything that goes along with that makes me feel a lot more confident to say this is ME, and that’s awesome! Also, after I had trained for and completed the London marathon I have such a different view of what I am capable of and what us women can do when we put our minds to something!

On the day I was super nervous but once we got there and found the tent and saw ladies starting to strip it very much felt like a now or never moment! It was a chilly morning but once we had taken our clothes off I think the adrenaline kicked in and I genuinely didn’t feel cold from that moment on!

I MET BRYONY – YEY! AND SHE GAVE US A GOOD MOTIVATIONAL SPEECH IN HER USUAL MATTER OF FACT – F*CK ANYONE WHO SAYS ANYTHING!! – KIND OF WAY!

All the ladies were chatting with each other and reassuring one another, the feeling of morale was amazing, and I felt so proud to be a part of it.

We then had to venture out of the security of the tent and head for a pre-race wee… I think I took for granted how big an event vitality 10k is! So, there was a lot of people who of course didn’t have a clue why were there in our sports underwear! We had a couple of people ask and once we explained the overwhelming feeling from everyone was ‘ Wow. Well done to all of you! You’re all so brave!’

We dropped our bags and headed to the start line, it was a little bit of a shame that we all got a little mixed up but I think this was a general feeling for all waves who were just muddling in together but you weren’t ever to far from a fellow lady in her pants!

The sun had come out and we were ready to go!

The moment we got going I knew I was in for pants up my bum the whole way, so I am now going with the official line that not only did I run in my underwear I basically ran in a thong! Haha!

I can’t lie I was going for a PB ( not the focus of the event totally, but hey, we’re badass mother runners, we are competitive with ourselves right!? ) mainly spurred on by the fact the ladies I was running with are speedy and I knew they would push me on. I liked the idea of getting my best 10k time in my pants! Even with pushing hard I enjoyed all of it ( ok, well maybe not the last 800m! ) the party atmosphere was so good, people shouting our names once we had gone past, cheering on other #celebrateyou runners, running with the Instagram influencers and dancing to the music. Crossing the line there was a big group of us all hugging and cheering and having our pictures taken, it was one of the biggest sisterhood moments I have ever had. A moment I will always remember.

Once we got back to get our bags it was so funny, there was no urgency to get our clothes back on! It was the new norm 😊

I can’t lie the next day I did have a little moment of ‘Did I ACTAULLY do that!? What was I thinking? My ass was just out there, in London, what did people think!?’ But it passed just as quickly as it came… I was proud of what we achieved, that people were talking about it in a positive way. I will totally do it again next year ( in bigger pants! ) and would urge any of you ladies considering it, DO IT, you won’t regret it. Be proud of that body, we are all different, we are all together, and if we support our real UNFILTERED bodies and are proud of them, then hopefully society will be too. I know that’s what I hope for my baby girl when she grows up… who can look at the pictures and say yep that was my Mummy running her PB in her pants! Xx

A BIT ABOUT CHLOE…

“I started running in 2015 but only ever up to 10k ( I ran a 10k race a week before I found out I was pregnant with baby number two no wonder it felt like such hard work!)

Following a rough pregnancy and the sheer chaos of keeping two humans alive I didn’t run for well over a year but when my place of work sent an email out saying they had places for the London Marathon (a real bucket list event for me! ) through Cancer research UK I could resist, thinking well I work with over 500 men who run marathons, triathlons, etc it won’t be me.. I did get chosen (my little girl was 8 weeks old! ) so I started training immediately running a 10k in December 2018 which was horrific, I came last and it was a real knock to my confidence. However, I pushed on, I really gave my training my all and did everything I could to get me to the start line. The actual day itself was unreal, I came on my period during the race, had to take a very urgent poop in a bush and it took me several hours to complete…BUT I did complete it! I have since run several more 10ks, try and park run every week and will be working towards to the Oxford half marathon in October. I have also signed up to a trail event in Wales in November ( Gower? someone said its quite hilly!?) but I think that’s more for the two nights away! I run to keep sane, I don’t always love it during, but I always love it after 😊”

Follow Chloe’s journey over on Instagram by clicking here