We campaign to champion running, and runners, in our cities, towns and places. We do this to help give a voice and a face to why running - alongside cycling and walking for leisure and wellbeing, sport and as a way to get places, see people and to do things - has a vital role to play in enabling more happy, healthy and connected people, places and communities.
The UK government’s active travel strategy, Gear Change, has recently been reviewed and, once again, there is no mention of running. The UK’s 7-11 million runners, a feature of all our towns and cities, remain invisible in policy and funding.
Join us in asking the government to include running in its £2bn active travel plan and to boost funding and guidance to equip more GP surgeries to prescribe running on the NHS?
A sharp rise in depression and anxiety is occurring as lockdown eases, in what experts warn will be a post-Covid mental health crisis. While the government says it is searching for an answer to this problem, there’s a solution that could have a massive positive effect on the mental health and happiness of the nation: running.
As part of a network that supports and enables more and different people to run - with its many benefits for people and places - the world’s first Running Mayors deliver action and champion new ideas in their city or region.
Read more about them here and how you could either support their efforts or join them yourself as a Running Mayor for the place you know and care about deeply - where you live.
Research shows that runners interact with fellow pedestrians as well as cyclists and vehicle drivers at times differently to those walking. This depends on physical design and infrastructure, and the embodied desire of the runner - who may be running for leisure, or sport, or transport, at different times and all at the same time. Most simply, running is typically at least twice as fast as walking, and approaching other pedestrians and other road users at this pace requires clarification in order to improve safety.
With as many as one in five adults running regularly in the UK (Sport England), runners are a visible and a daily feature of all our towns, cities and places, in rural and urban contexts alike. Yet the runner is absent, and largely invisible, in terms of transport and urban policy and in thinking about how we live and move.
That’s why we’re calling for explicit inclusion of runners in the Highway Code to give this simple and intensely human act and the millions of people who run regularly, some recognition.
A quarter of a million people in the UK already run everyday journeys. We want to double that. It needn’t be far or fast. Just #RunSome journeys. Sign up now to get the inside track on the #RunSome campaign.
