A 500km ultra to raise money for... tattoos?

Lydia Oldham is running 500km to raise funds and awareness of Tanya Buxton's tattoo charity, the Mastectomy Tattooing Alliance.

Oct 16, 2025

When I started running seriously as an adult and was signing up for races, there was always a cause attached. There was fundraising for a charity.

My first 5k race, back in 2007 was in aid of breast cancer. I’d signed up for a race with a friend, you see, and didn’t realize it was only for women. Regardless, I’d raised £500 for charity by the time I turned up on race day, and it felt good to know that even if I hadn’t actually run, I did some good.

After that, I made it a point to sign up for a couple of 5k and 10k races every year, but always through a charity. As a result, the Spinal Injuries Association, the Bobby Moore Foundation, and Shelter all got thousands of pounds from my meager efforts.

That’s why I’m always looking for stories of people who are doing something with their runs. The superhuman act of running hundreds of miles isn’t that interesting to me in and of itself. I like a layer of true purpose as well. Whether that’s undertaking the challenge of a marathon a month to raise awareness of the mental health issues that arise from miscarriage, running marathons topless after a double mastectomy, or running an ultra a day across the length of India with a brain tumor to give hope to others struggling with cancer.

When I saw Lydia Oldham AKA @comerunwith.me was not running 5km but 500 km (300 miles) from London to Falmouth to raise money for a tattoo charity, my interest piqued. But a tattoo charity??

The Mastectomy Tattooing Alliance gives free tattoos of realistic nipples and complete cover-ups for people that have had mastectomies, preventative treatment, or gender-affirming care. Stories & Ink, a tattoo shop in Cornwall that supports the MTA, asked Lydia if she would help raise awareness and funds with a run, and she didn’t hesitate.

Tatt’s Life

Why Lydia, though? What’s the connection? Well, she’s one of the new breed of heavily-tattooed runners, and she’s worked with Stories & Ink in the past.

“I started getting tattoos for confidence reasons. It’s almost like a shield. From there, I started collecting them for art reasons, but it all comes down to confidence. When it comes to the charity, giving women tattoos almost brings them that sense of normality and confidence back, and I want to spread that.”

The kind of renegade runner aesthetic mirrors life, of course. I remember when the arms of Premier League footballers weren’t covered in full sleeves of tattoos. We can maybe thank David Beckham for that. I remember his new tattoos being scandalous enough for the major British tabloids to dedicate cover page space to the England captain’s new ink, but it’s normal stuff now, isn’t it?

It’s not such an edgy thing to get a tattoo. I even have some. 32% of American adults do. Back in my days as a heavy metal music journalist, there was a feature in British weekly Kerrang! magazine called Tatt’s Life. Yes, they interviewed a rockstar about their tattoos.

Tattoos were the preserve of sailors and prisoners. That’s the hard look that musicians playing hard music were trying to imitate, of course. The colorful Sailor Jerry school of tattoos is still a popular one in the hardcore punk scene. It’s a way of visually identifying that you belong. Or don’t.

I see so many parallels in the trail running scene, where The Speed Project and Satisfy center athletes who don’t look like the stereotypical runner.

“Especially in the trail running scene, the weirder side of running, there are a lot more misfits and people who don’t feel like they belong in the track and field scene or the world of elite running. You get a lot of people in the ultra world that have come from drinking too much and partying too much and they’ve found a different sort of pain, which is ultra running.”

From the city to the seaside

As I publish this, Lydia is over halfway through the run from central London to the seaside town of Falmouth, and that journey is a familiar one for her.

Lydia has been running for just five years, having picked up the habit at the start of the pandemic. Having moved swiftly up from lockdown exercise to the Hackney Half to a full marathon, she realized that she didn’t enjoy the track sessions and rigidity of training that went into road running. When Brad Farrant of Track Mafia suggested that they could get a train 50 km out of London and return to east London on foot via a meandering trail with ice cream and snacks, Lydia’s eyes were opened to the power of the trail.

“It was the most casual 50k, but we had so much fun. Then it became how far can I go, rather than how fast.”

She left the big city for a simpler life earlier this year as she decamped from London to Ericeira on the Portuguese coast, 35 km northwest of Lisbon. To get to know the country she was moving to, she decided to run the “magical” 620km Caminho Português from Lisbon to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain.

A daunting distance, Lydia took heart from having run the 550 km of The Speed Project a year earlier in just under five days. Accordingly, the extra 70 km took an extra day of running.

That 620 km jaunt across Portugal was also an attempt at an FKT - a Fastest Known Time. The concept was thought up by ultrarunning legend Buzz Burrell in 2000 along with Pete Bakwin. The idea is that FKTs are speed records performed solo, or with a very small support team, so the traditional world record method wasn’t the most suitable method of recording these incredible feats. FKTs are recorded simply and honestly by submitting one’s GPX files.

“As long as all your files are in order and you definitely did it, you get the FKT. Hopefully someone sees it and beats it one day, because that’s what it’s there for.

A bit of preparation

While those miles were further proof to herself that she was capable, Lydia’s first big adventure was that TSP solo endeavor in March 2024. It was 340 miles from LA to Vegas, but prior to that she had only run a single 100k ultra a few months prior.

“It was quite scary, but it was also quite nice because I had no idea what I was doing, so I had no expectation of anything. A lot was learned!”

Regardless, she finished the race in the allotted five days and even “had a good time.” Now, with another “crazy run” ahead of her, Lydia laughs that “everyone needs to calm down” on the distances. Of course, she fully acknowledges her own position “as someone that runs crazy distances.”

“I would so much rather run 100k than an all-out 10k. To me, that’s the most terrifying distance.”

“You have no room for error. From the get-go you have to know your pacing, your strategy, and everything has to go to plan to get a PB. Whereas on a 100k, I can stop and have a snack, I could fall over and have a terrible time, and still come back and do well. I just find that way of running comes so much more naturally to me.”

I suggest that there’s also less pressure on maximizing all of your efforts in an FKT or ultra race because so many fewer people have run those distances. There’s a tacit understanding that any reasonable runner can complete a 10 km race, so there’s as much pressure as there is possibility of getting a personal best time.

“The good thing about ultras is the more you do, the better you’re going to be. It’s more time on your feet, and ultras really are that knowledge of what to do when things go wrong. Half of ultras is problem solving, and being ok with things not being right.”

Even though the distance is comparable, Lydia is treating the MTA300 a little differently. I take a guess that after completing The Speed Project, her first extreme distance, within five days that she’ll get to Falmouth in four days, but no.

“I’m doing 100 km a day. There’s no want to push it. I just want to run and raise money for the charity.”

We can help with the second part.

Donate to the MTA

Links and further reading

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Thanks for reading,
Raz x