MP praises Run England group leaders in Loughborough

Nicky Morgan, MP for Loughborough, praised group leaders as she shared her passion for running at a recent Leadership in Running Fitness course.

The newly-appointed Economic Secretary to the Treasury emphasised the importance of running groups and programmes such as the Leicester-Shire and Rutland Sport (LRS) Beginners Running Project, in building sport into people’s daily lives.

Nicky got in on the action at the course on Saturday, at SportPark, Loughborough University. The England Athletics course was attended by 20 volunteers who are all hoping to encourage more people into running.

She spoke to the group about her passion for running, calling it her 'sanity break' from a busy life as a politician, describing how she had trained for the Virgin London Marathon and completed it in five hours 15 minutes.

Nicky told group leaders: “[The Virgin London Marathon] was a massive achievement for me, although according to my five year old son, my success was tarnished by being beaten by a fire extinguisher and a beer bottle!”

“I now regularly enter 5Ks and parkruns with hundreds of other people so it’s clear that running is more popular than ever. What Run England and you as group leaders are doing to encourage more people into sport and build it into their daily lives is really important. It’s great to break records, but there’s also a lot to be said for running as a way of keeping your sanity and to improve general wellbeing and fitness, so thank you.”

Nicky then joined the group in dynamic warm-up and static cool-down activities, which provided demonstrations of good practice and ideas for the leaders to use with their own beginner runners.

Some of the group leaders have received scholarships from the LRS Beginners Running Project and will now go on to establish new beginners running groups in Leicestershire.

Beverley Hooper, Running Activator for Leicestershire and Rutland, said: "The passion for running and enthusiasm of our Run Leaders has been crucial to the success of the project. As a result, many new runners have gone on to exceed their own expectations by entering local fun runs and events, league races and half and full marathons.

"We have a core number of established groups that run all year round and many runners have joined local clubs. Thanks to Run England and LRS, running in Leicestershire is going from strength to strength!"

The LRS Beginners Running Project currently has 45 registered running groups, which are all searchable at runengland.org/groups. Over 800 new runners have taken part between January 2012 and September 2013 whilst 60 group leaders have been trained and have delivered over 60 running groups.