(Warning: contains swearing, descriptions of mangled toes, periods and a 39-year-old taking her top off)

Sunday, September 20, 2026, the wrong side of 3am: There’s nothing quite like the crashing realisation, as one limps along a dewy-grey pavement in Knightsbridge adorned in several no-longer-glowing glow sticks and a bedraggled hot pink tutu, that one has made a horrible error of judgement. Worse still, there’s absolutely nothing one can do about it. One is 22 miles in, after all. What’s another 4.2? Well, when your feet are slowly bludgeoning themselves to a pulp with every step, a whole fucking lot actually. 

Preparation (or lack thereof)

I signed up for the Cancer Research Shine Night Walk Marathon a year ago along with my good friend, Georgina. With both of us being busy working mums, we decided pretty early on that “winging it” would be the plan on the night. Neither of us were unfit, but nor were we in the stage of life where we could embrace the cheerful AI-suggested regime of a casual 10-hour hike here and 15-mile amble there. I got my 10k steps most days. I went for a few four-mile walks over the summer, particularly once my fundraising page started blowing up. I fully intended to do my damnedest to complete the whole thing, I’d simply wing it all the way if I had to. I just didn’t really appreciate that said winging it would involve so much pain, surrealness and semi-nudity outside Five Guys on a surprisingly lively Bond Street at 2am. 

It was just a walk, after all. How hard could it be?

Miles 1 – 5 🚶

Approx. 7pm – 9pm 🕗

Georgina and I arrive on the night suitably fed, watered, and supplied with water, snacks, base layers, plasters and far more glow sticks than necessary. At the starting point we go to the loo, adorn ourselves with glow sticks, put on our base layers before promptly deciding it is far too muggy and take them off again, before eventually, on a whim, purchasing a couple of hot pink tutus. As I attempt to position said tutu above my t-shirt and under my backpack, tugging it down as it obstinately flips up, it does not occur to me the profound and complicated relationship I am to develop with it over the next 10 hours. 

The atmosphere at the start line buzzes along nicely, everyone happy, hyped and ready to get the fuck on with it. We suffer through an eager warm-up routine/aerobic class because what else is needed just before a night of excessive calorie burning but the chance to burn a few more? And eventually we cross the start line en masse, a crowd of glow-in-the-dark, purple-t-shirted crusaders, marching on to beat cancer. It all feels very upbeat and optimistic. We are a team! We’re going to Crush This Thing! We are… getting slightly rained on, but it doesn’t matter because there’s a local choir singing us on, and there are children over there waving flags and cheering. This was a brilliant idea. 

The first mile is literally a walk in the park (being that we are, in fact, still in the park for most of it) and before we know it we’ve crossed our first bridge (Vauxhall) and are heading for our first pit stop a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace. 

At this point it’s around 9pm. We go to the loo (I’m on my period because I have one of those cycles which earmarks the most inconvenient time to have to keep to a tampon schedule and plonks itself right there). We top up our water, raid the free snack selection and text our other halves to make sure children went to bed on time and no preteen pick-ups have been forgotten about. The pit stop features seating areas coupled rather confusingly with signs warning us of The Dangers Of Sitting (being that it Makes It Harder to Get Up), so we sagely comply and carry on.

Mile 5 – 10 🚶

Approx. 9pm – 11ish 🕙

Southbank. We talk a lot about everything. Families, kids, work, cancer. We talk about heavy stuff. We talk about lighter stuff. We complain, we commiserate, we listen and we laugh a lot. The tutu rides up, cutting into my abdomen, which is, admittedly, feeling rather bloated and confused by the excesses of snacks and water at such a late hour. 

At some point we pass a woman sitting on a bench, telling her friend she’s going to take some paracetamol now. I think, rather smugly, “Oh wow, we’re not even halfway and she’s already popping pills, how is she going to manage later on?” Later on, I will come to realise she is, in fact, a fucking genius and taking a pre-emptive painkiller might have been the best idea I never had.

By mile 10 I still feel mostly OK. My feet are starting to niggle, my joints are beginning to grumble. My body knows it has done something pretty unusual and hardcore and that is all well and good, but it’s quite ready to stop doing it now, please.

Miles 10 – 15 🚶

Approx. 11pm – 1am 🕛

This is where things begin to go from still OK-ish to a bit ouchy to decidedly not OK actually, made all the worse by knowing we still had so very far left to go. By the midway point we are both feeling sore. G has pain all up and down her legs. My pain is more in my feet, with an emerging focus on my left big toe. With every stride I can feel the nail slowly lifting, yanking at the nerves and becoming something foreign that pokes back into the nailbed a little harder with every step. 

And there are just. So. Many. Steps.

At this point, my body has gone beyond grumbling and is now thoroughly confused. Instead of sleeping, I’m walking after having already walked further than I possibly ever have done in my life. I’m not really tired in the drowsy sense, more in the overtired-hyped-up-toddler sense which adds a decidedly surreal and bleary perspective to the proceedings. At some point, my body switches from endurance to survival. I stop bleeding, I drink and eat mechanically. Calories take on a whole new meaning – no longer something to count or monitor, they’re simply units of fuel. Something that might make the next mile a little less hideous… It would all feel quite revolutionary and freeing if it weren’t for all the aforementioned hideousness.

We walk through another pit stop. Fill water, take snacks, stare balefully at the signs telling us not to sit down. We keep going. The tutu finds its way between my legs and wearily I re-adjust, the netting already achingly familiar between my fingers. It doesn’t occur to me to take it off.

Miles 15 – 20 🐌

Approx. 1am – 3am 🕑

“This is worse than childbirth,” Georgina declares as we trudge past fancy houses on Grosvenor Square and round Park Lane. “I’d gladly push both of them out one after the other rather than do this again.” I chuckle but can’t quite find it in me to disagree. Except perhaps that first labour with L. There are few mountains comparable to those 40 hours of hell.

We’re both limping at this point. All the joy of the first 10 miles has been sucked away. There is only walking. Pavement. Pain. But the city around us is still surprisingly awake. People engage us in conversation, cheer us on from the full swing of their nights out. As we pass under Marble Arch there’s a scuffle which turns serious at the sound of a bottle smashing. Another walker calls the police and, somehow, we find it in ourselves to inject a tiny bit of urgency into our hobbling.  

My left big toe no longer feels part of my body. Pain radiates through my feet and legs, splintering into my joints. My fingers are swollen, my shoulders ache from the rub of my backpack. If there were a quitters’ route at this point, it would be extremely hard to not take it. Perhaps that’s why there isn’t. The tubes aren’t even running anymore. If we want to get back to the car, this is the only way.

It starts to get a bit cold, so we put our base layers back on. I can’t be bothered to work out how to do this without taking my t-shirt off, so I strip to my bra in front of a Five Guys. Past embarrassment, past caring who sees me in my unsexy sports bra, past caring if I walk into traffic, at this point. If I get hit by a car, at least I’ll be able to lie down. Yes. That is what it has come to. The fucking tutu goes where the fuck it wants.

Miles 20 – 26.2 🧟‍♀️

3am – 4.54am 🕓

I try to summon the energy and wherewithal to use some visualisation skills, the types I’ve used in labour and during visits to the hygienist, but at this point my brain has unravelled. I can’t really think cohesive thoughts so much as a constant, ‘Uuuuuuurghh’ sound, like an alarm slowly running out of battery. The roads are finally beginning to quieten, or perhaps that’s just because our route has taken us away from the city centre – in any case, it’s a good thing because neither Georgina nor I remember how to cross a road safely anymore. OK, I agree, finally, this is worse than childbirth. Even L’s birth. At least then I was lying down. And on drugs.

The last pit stop is just before mile 22. I try to eat something and almost throw up; calories are no longer my friend. We’ve gone past the point of anything making this task any easier. I drink water, taking way too long to realise that my sudden thirst is because I’m panting, despite having slowed to a pace of an arthritic tortoise. 

Whatever comes after survival mode, that’s where we are now. Hell, perhaps. We don’t have the energy to talk anymore. We just feebly moan when some fucker jogs – jogs – past us around mile 24. There are others around us. We all groan, moan and limp. There’s a camaraderie, but it’s not really the same as it was nine hours earlier. This one feels more survivalist. More like we are all just dragging ourselves along, and happen to be doing so next to one another. 

We cross Albert Bridge. We hobble to mile 26. Georgina is quietly crying. I am still panting, still Urrrrrrrghh-ing amidst a dull fear of falling over and not being able to stop my face smashing into the ground let alone get back up. The 0.2 miles beyond the 26 feel insanely cruel. Marshals and performers cheer us on relentlessly, saying happy and encouraging things. Someone tells us we look fabulous in our tutus. I vaguely wonder what a tutu is. 

The finish line is inside a big building with music and gentle lights and stars in the ceiling. Someone hands me a medal and I put it on and get a sudden rush of feelings, which is surprising because I didn’t think I had any anymore.

There are chairs and beanbags scattered around, but they’re all taken, so in the end we just lie down where we are, on the ground. It is the most blissful thing in the whole world. 

Until the moment comes to try and get back up. Fuck. Me.

Afterwards

As I pulled into my driveway, the sun was just about coming up, in a grey and unremarkable way. I shuffled my way to the front door like an ancient crone. Upon stepping over the threshold, I encountered my seven-year-old son, who proudly informed me that his tooth had just fallen out. I told him that was brilliant and perhaps he’d like to go and watch some TV for a bit, Mummy was just going to crawl upstairs. No, she’s absolutely fine, she’s just a little tired. No, that definitely wasn’t a swearword. 

I wriggled out of my tutu, feeling a confusing mixture of affection and strong desire never to see the fucker again. 

My toes were not a pretty sight. The large leftie in particular was to become even less pretty in the days and weeks to come – and even now, three weeks later, it’s still a riot of discolouration and uncertain nail attachment. What was more pressing at the time, however, was how difficult it was to move. There wasn’t a millimetre of my body that didn’t yank in pain. My husband had to help me get between bathroom and bed, much in the same way he had immediately after giving birth. Like then, my body had been pushed to its limits and then shoved, unceremoniously, beyond them into the unknown ether of pain, confusion, saturating exhaustion. I crawled into bed and grateful oblivion.

Interestingly, it took me less than a day to recover from the lost sleep. I slept for a couple of hours that morning, got up and shuffled down to the sofa and spent the day in a narcoleptic state of semi-consciousness, responding to messages, posting photos when I could, dozing off in front of comfort TV. My husband brought me food and drink. The kids came sporadically, tucking me in, reading to me, only managing to step/fall on the sore toe twice. It was a bit like the post-birth hours of recovery without the bother of having to look after a newborn.

The aches and pains stopped aching and paining so much by day three or four. My feet took a little longer. The first week I swapped my Converse for Crocs and limited myself to hobbling the school run, but after eight days or so I was back to taekwondo (with my toes bandaged, mostly to spare others the hideous sight of them) and even jogging again. 

Was it worth it?

There were many times when we both said things like, ‘Never again!’ and likened the pain to childbirth, chemo, limb amputation… And it will be a long time until I forget the feelings I had at mile 22, so very far from home with so very long left to go… But nor will I forget the buzzing optimism at the start, the relentlessly cheerful volunteers along the route and at the pit stops, the swell of pride at the finish line. The hopeless laughter borne of the desperation that if we didn’t laugh we would most certainly cry. The crying anyway.

Are there things I would do differently next time? Yes – I would prepare better. At the time I thought that there was little point doing a long walk if I couldn’t do loads of long walks, but actually if I had done just one I’d have realised that my trainers weren’t quite right. I wore Skechers Go Walks which are absolutely fine day to day, but for me personally, they stopped being compatible with my toenails around mile 15. I’d have also considered bringing along some form of pain management. Chances are a couple of paracetamol wouldn’t have made much difference (and apparently, taking them for this kind of event isn’t necessarily advised) but perhaps the placebo effect would have helped us along a bit. 

Was it worth it? It really was so bad. So painful. So hard. But you know what’s worse? Cancer. My fundraising page has made almost £2,000 towards getting rid of this bastard disease. So yes, it was absofuckinglutely worth it. Every wince, every rub, every toenail, every last, bloody step. Even in a tutu.