An ITU nurse who spends her working days supporting patients after trauma is set to swap the hospital ward for the road this weekend, taking on the Chester Half Marathon to raise money for Wales Air Ambulance. Hayley Whitehead-Wright, 39, will line up for the May 17 race after months of training she described as brutal.

Whitehead-Wright is no stranger to the service she is fundraising for. Four years ago she joined Wales Air Ambulance as a Patient Liaison Nurse at the after care service, while also balancing her role at Wrexham Maelor Hospital. In both jobs, she and colleague Jo Yeoman support patients and families after what is often a life-altering and sudden traumatic event.

Her own running story began only in 2025, when she took it up to improve her wellbeing and unwind after work. She started with sofa to 5K, then moved on to the Wrexham 10K and a few other events before signing up for the Chester Half Marathon. That next step has pushed her farther than anything she had tried before.

“It started with sofa to 5K, then I did Wrexham 10K and a few other events. But signing up for the Chester Half is the biggest challenge I have ever set myself,” she said. “Doubling my distance has been a different ball game. You’re going from training for an hour to three hours, and that requires real commitment.”

She fits training around work and family life, running three or four times a week, but said the build-up has not always gone smoothly. Whitehead-Wright said she had “a massive wobble” during training and admitted there were moments when she hated every second of it. She reached out on Facebook to the Chester Half Marathon group to say she was worried about making the time, and two women privately messaged her to say they would meet up and encourage each other along the route.

That response mattered. Whitehead-Wright said the running community had been overwhelmingly supportive, with many people saying they had faced the same concerns. She has also been documenting her fitness journey on social media, partly to keep herself accountable and partly to show what the process has really looked like.

She has been blunt about the comments that come with being a slower runner. “You’d be surprised how many people shout out to me about my size or how slow I am when I am out and about, running. But I cancel out their noise,” she said. “All I focus on is how I feel when I am outdoors! And I feel great.”

Whitehead-Wright, a mum-of-one, said she is not a natural runner and that the event is about far more than pace. For her, this weekend is about covering the distance and hitting her fundraising goal for Wales Air Ambulance, which helps people at the worst moment of their lives. The finish line will be a personal test, but it will also be a public show of support for the service she knows from both sides of the work.

The result is a race with two stakes at once: a woman pushing herself farther than ever before, and a charity appeal tied to a job she already lives every day. If Whitehead-Wright gets through 13.1 miles in Chester, it will be because she trained through the long hours, the wobble and the doubt — and because other runners met her with help when she asked for it.