Way of the Roses Challenge – 4Louis

Claire has run for around a decade and although not near the front of the pack, she will always keep putting one foot in front of the other to get to the finish line and has completed numerous half marathons. The variety of people you see whilst running is amazing and most have an inspiring story to share, we hope ours is one of those stories.

Cass picked up a pair of running trainers on 1^st January 2020 to support Claire wanting to get back into running after a significant amount of time off. Although at the time she regretted agreeing to the early start to get to New Year’s Day parkrun, we both made it around. As COVID hit around March time we threw ourselves into getting miles in, let’s face it, there was not much else to do! Although we do not always run together (as we run at different paces) it was great to have someone spur you on to get out the door.

In the last year, our motivation to get out and run has drastically changed, and we are now spurred on by our daughter and fundraising in her memory. After a journey of several rounds of IVF in 2021, we were overjoyed to finally get a positive pregnancy test and with the permission of the consultants involved Claire kept running.

Well plodding along whilst keeping healthy throughout pregnancy, however, our pregnancy wasn’t easy and in September 2021 our world came crashing down as our daughter was born sleeping. There are no words to explain the pain that caused, giving birth when we knew that our daughter had already died was like living in a nightmare.