Family get tough to raise money for Macmillan Nurses

A family are celebrating after conquering the famous Tough Mudder challenge to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support.

Joanne Hargreaves, Customer Relationship Manager at Rossendale Borough Council, husband Barry, daughter Chloe, and family friend David Pickup completed the course in four hours.

The 12 mile long challenge which was held at Cholmondeley Castle, Malpas, saw them take on more than 20 obstacles and plenty of mud.

The group managed to raise £850 beating their target of £500.

The money will go to Macmillan Cancer Support, which supplies nurses with specialist knowledge to help those suffering from cancer.

The donation is in memory of Barry’s dad Bryan who passed away after battling cancer earlier this year.

Joanne says the charity’s nurses who cared for Bryan were ‘invaluable’ providing ‘a much needed calmness in some very difficult times’.

They were simply wonderful, especially at the end over the last few weeks when Brian deteriorated. Between them and the hospice nurses they came out three to four times a day and even stayed overnight at the end and just provided so much support to us all.

Determined to thank the charity the family hit upon the idea of taking on the Tough Mudder challenge.

To get in shape they trained regularly with high intensity interval training (HIIT), bootcamps, hurricane, personal training sessions and swimming, which Joanne did to prepare herself for the muddy course.

She said:

My daughter did really well as she pulled a muscle after 6 miles, and she really struggled to finish but never at any point did she consider quitting. Due to the particularly bad weather it was even muddier than usual as we did the course on the second day so it was already well churned up.

However, it was not as bad I was expecting and I was surprised at how much fun it was – we really enjoyed it! So much in fact that we have signed up to do it again next year!