A Christmas message from Nice Work
What an incredible year 2025 has been!
As the year draws to a close here at Nice Work HQ, we pause with mince pies and festive tunes to celebrate the last 12 months. It’s been quite the year, and we need to take a moment to celebrate how far we have come. With 150 races, we rarely get a moment to just stand still and look back at what we have achieved.
2025 will stay with us, not only as it marks the fifth year that we took over Nice Work but an important year of growth – awards – two of them! – new races – new race partners – record entries - new team additions – charity fundraising records.
A personal look back on the year from Rachael Wood, our Managing Director:
"It started on a not so good note in March when we had to pull the Hastings HM at 7pm the night before the race. But all things teach a lesson to learn from and resilience. HHM25 could have lost A LOT of money in charity fundraising. But we turned it around and the rescheduled October race not only recovered the loss but raised circa. £50k for local good causes to be distributed by the Hastings Lions. I will never forget the next day when our runners turned up to run anyway in their race bibs and volunteers turned up to help us de-rig – that emotion, spirit and that support will stay with me forever.
Chelmsford Marathon weekend was another highlight for me. We had a record entry and 1000 more runners than last year, and it was a little bit of race magic down on the finish line. Being part of the emotion for all our wonderful runners made me fall in love with what we do all over again. We introduced NW branded pacer flags for the first time, and I could see that we had grown into a very slick and professional race organiser.
On this note, I must mention our two awards 2 weeks ago. To be recognised as best agency and best midsized event for HHM in the whole of the country made me so happy. It made all those early mornings, frozen wet feet, packing and unpacking vans worthwhile! This is a celebration of the incredible team that we have and the fantastic running community who support our events"
The awards mean a lot as it was a public vote and we heard from the organisers that we secured a lot of votes. That means the world as people took time to vote for us and this is overwhelmingly heartwarming.
It didn’t just stop there – we also gained FOUR Race Check awards this year:
Sherwood Marathon, HM & 10k – GOLD
Rye Ancient Trails 30k & 15k – BRONZE
Monsal Trail HM & 10k (Oct) – GOLD
Chelmsford Marathon & HM – SILVER (up from Bronze in 2024!)
Growth is seen across charity donations as well as entries. Our generous runners will have donated almost £15k in voluntary donations across the year and many of our charity partner races have raised huge amounts of money from the events that we have hosted. Thank you to everyone who has taken part or supported an event this year, you have made a huge difference.
But the real highlight is the Nice Work green dream team. We are so lucky to have an incredible team of talented and passionate individuals that power the events from behind the scenes all the way through to race day delivery. They are the heartbeat of Nice Work and we just want to say thank you to the entire team.
2026 is set to be another epic year with another 5 new races to bring under the Nice Work umbrella, and that’s just for starters. More news to follow in the new year!
We hope that you have a merry Christmas with your friends and families, and a healthy 2026 filled with laughter and fun times.
Much festive love,
