COVID-19: A message from Running Woman about our virtual runs and challenges

As many of you will know, just recently we released our April virtual runs, which we appreciate some may have seen as a questionable step given the present unprecedented global crisis we are facing.

We are extremely pleased tonight that the importance of exercise was recognised during this challenging time and while that position is maintained we will continue to support our community with our virtual events.

We continue to be completely overwhelmed by the response to our events from our amazing community, which under normal circumstances is just the most beautiful thing to see more and more ladies getting involved each month, the conversations, the inspirational stories, the amount of support & encouragement we see for each other, we could talk about that alone all night, however, this month as a result of all the uncertainty in the world, we have been inundated with requests to support variations based on wide variety of personal circumstances, only a handful of which are mentioned below.

• We have women with children who are now unable to get out due to childcare requirements.
• We have ladies who completed a number of their runs in gyms which are now closed or closing.
• We have members of our community who are self-isolating for all of our benefit.
• We have women who are sadly too ill to run presently.
• We have spoken to a few, who've now received recommendations to stay in completely due to risks identified by their GP's or the NHS.

Whilst we have spent many days, nights and weekends now trying to accommodate every single individual request to alter event criteria, provide individual time extensions, swap to alternate distances, or support in anyway other way we can, all of which we're absolutely delighted to do under the circumstances, we are now receiving more messages that we can respond to and some of those are simply from our running community who have been able to complete their events.

Our events have always been based on mutual trust between us and our amazing community, we talk about the benefits of genuine achievement, and now we are going to give that trust back to you for the weeks ahead. We know that every single one of you who enters our events wants to complete the challenges, we see the determination in the conversations we have, and it's such a delightful experience for us too, we just can not monitor so many individual variations due to such radical changes in personal circumstances.

We can no longer respond to, nor track individual requirements, despite our best efforts to stay on top of your requests, as such, as our finishers medals batches arrive, we will deliver every single event finishers medal to our community, for the first time, and hopefully once we are through this together, it will be something we never ever need to repeat, we will not request proof of runs, if you need to vary your plans to achieve your challenge, you do it, but make sure for us, for the rest of the Running Woman community, and most importantly, for yourself, you do achieve what you set out to do, and once you have, you come back and share your story of determination in the face of astonishing adversity, because we as a community will be here to cheer you on, swollen with pride, and full of admiration.

RunStrong, RunHard, RunHappy, but most importantly RunSafe, all our love, RW x