A woman who has dressed up as a water bottle to go for daily runs for a year-and-a-half to raise awareness for plastic pollution is set to tackle the London Marathon in the costume as she wants to advocate without any “doom and gloom”. Nikki Hawkes, 28, a marketer in the technology industry, from Somerset, decided to set herself the challenge in September 2021, during a coronavirus lockdown, to run 100 miles in 10 days dressed as a water bottle – but she has not stopped since.
Nikki’s costume is made from a 10-year-old vodka bottle costume, from her family’s dressing up box, which she repurposed into a water bottle, stitching on plastic pollution awareness signs. Nikki gets a mix of responses to her water bottle on her daily runs, with some people sparking up a conversation about plastic pollution and others just giving her “weird stares”.
She got the running bug while studying at the University of Southampton from 2013 to 2016, when she joined Park Run as a free way to exercise and loved going to fancy dress socials – so, she wanted to combine her two hobbies and do some good at the same time. The fancy dress fanatic ran the Paris Marathon in 2021, but to her “absolute shock”, she was the only person in fancy dress – this year, she is planning on running the London Marathon for the charity Marine Connection.
