Three Peaks Challenge Part 1: Wonder Woman solo on Coot-tha

My friends at Truth or Dare Mountain are completing the Three Peaks Challenge this weekend.

In a sign of solidarity for the sisterhood, I ran Mt Coot-tha this morning dressed as Wonder Woman. (Yes, by myself. In costume.)

I'm going back tomorrow for my second lap and you can join us if you like. But more on that later. Let's cover off the reasons I put myself out there this morning first.

Let's start with these:

1. It really was the least I could do. These women have been completing the most ridiculous dares you can imagine, at a going rate of just fifteen pounds. A Saturday morning lap of Mt Coot-tha in a Wonder Woman costume is really tame in comparison to stuff like this:

• Wearing a shark costume all day
• Doing a choreographed dance routine at a London tube station
• Bathing in cornflakes and milk
• Eating marmite for a day

You can see videos of all their dares on the Truth or Dare Mountain website.

2.  The money people have paid to see them do this crazy stuff is helping boost the literacy skills of Rwandan women through the Global Grassroots project.

3.  Kate is doing this with a some serious damage to her spinal discs (don't tell her physio).

4.  I feel partly responsible for Kate's physical well being in this challenge. I encouraged her to do her first marathon at the Run Like Crazy marathon a couple of years back. Since then she's gone from strength to strength. I say partly responsible... she is the kind of woman who will always push herself to achieve... but I don't know whether she did quite so much of this physical stuff before she met the Athletic Powerhouse...

5. I've never run the lap of Mt Coot-tha before, and with all this in mind I didn't see any reason not to start now. I nearly chickened out a the last minute... after all, what kind of crazy is it to run in fancy dress... but I'm glad I did it. I embraced the fact I was dressed in costume and cheerily spruiked 'good morning' to anyone I came in range of.

At the start ready to go! Notice the  superhero "utility belt" 

I found a group of cyclists willing to take a photo of me at the summit.

At the top of the back... this was the start of a downhill for me today, rather than being the end of an uphill.

Mostly, people were pretty cheery back and the second photo above was taken by a group of cyclists who were pretty happy to run into Wonder Woman on their Saturday morning ride! But there were a fair share of grumps too that did everything they could to ignore me. Then again, maybe they were just in the zone. Mt Coot-tha does tend to attract its fair share of serious athletes for serious training sessions...

(That's what I'm telling myself. It definitely wasn't that they thought if they made eye contact that they'd be drawn in to a dodgy Russian mail order bride scheme or Nigerian royal fortune scam by the delusional runner in fancy dress.)

More of it tomorrow. Check out the details on the Truth or Dare Facebook page and come along if you dare.*

*superhero costume optional