Urban Tough Mudder-ing for CBIT
By Mollie Benjamin, a Solicitor with Bolt Burdon Kemp
On Friday 12th April, Caroline Lobsang and I took part in the Urban Tough Mudder in Finsbury Park. This was a 5km run with 13 obstacles along the way designed to push you to your limits and requiring teamwork to succeed. Being an ‘Urban’ Tough Mudder meant that there were no mud pits or water to wade through, but we were in a London park in April after a week of rain, so we still finished covered in mud!
We did this to raise money for an amazing charity – The Child Brain Injury Trust.
The Child Brain Injury Trust provides practical and emotional support to over 8,000 children each year who have suffered a brain injury – along with their parents, brothers and sisters – who are all also affected. Their aim is to improve the quality of life for every child or young person and to raise awareness of the fact that brain injury can affect young people in very different ways to adults. The Child Brain Injury Trust empowers families as they adjust to the long term effects of a child’s brain injury
This was my first event like this and I did not know what to expect when we arrived in Finsbury Park on Friday evening. At our start time of 6pm, over 80 participants were called in to the starting pen for a quick warm up and to repeat the ‘Mudder’s Pledge’, promising to work as a team and help your fellow Tough Mudders around the course, before setting off.
We soon realised that some of the obstacles can only be completed if you work as a team, like the first obstacle, ‘Blades of Glory’, where we were faced with a wall slanted towards us at an angle, meaning that you could not use your feet to clamber up and over and needed a bit (or a lot) of a push from someone on the ground beneath you.
Other obstacles included a test of fears such as ‘Tight Squeeze’ – a crawl through dark and enclosed tunnels with rows of hanging heavy troughs filled with sand to slither underneath and ‘Next Level’ – a giant two-storey-high cargo net to climb up and over, trying not to look down through the net!
The course continued with a variety of challenges and we ran, walked, climbed, crawled, dragged and swung our way to the finish line where we were greeted by our lovely colleagues who came to support us.
We would like to thank everyone who supported us in this challenge. The money raised will go towards The Child Brain Injury Trust to continue to help more and more children affected by brain injuries.
Mollie Benjamin is a Solicitor at Bolt Burdon Kemp specialising in Child Brain Injury claims. If you would like specialist advice about making a claim on behalf of a brain-injured child, contact her free of charge and in confidence on 020 3973 4998 or at molliebenjamin@boltburdonkemp.co.uk. For more fundraising events in the London area contact Francesca Barry at francescabarry@cbituk.org.
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