Your Town Runners EN11 celebrate This Girl Can week and Pride month

Your Town Runners EN11 celebrate This Girl Can and Pride

Your Town Runners EN11 was formed by Mark White in 2015 as a free community run group in the town of Hoddesdon (postcode EN11). The idea was to connect people to themselves, their community and their surroundings through running.

There are now 4 qualified Run Leaders, including 'Captain' Sarah and 'Vice Captain' Lindsay. Run Leader Lucy Kennedy tells us, "A handful of us met and ran our first 5k and since then the group has gone from strength to strength and on many Tuesdays there can be about 30 of us out running together. We now have groups running in several other towns EN8, SG14 and SL5." 

The group meet weekly on a Tuesday at 7pm and run different 5k routes, some on the pavements others along the river or in the park. Every few weeks they get together for a coached session – hills or speed work, to help improve their running. They sometimes add in a longer Sunday run which, in the summer, is usually a trail run in the local woods.

Last Tuesday they celebrated This Girl Can week with all their female runners (top photo) and also June is Pride month so they all got together for a group photo with all the different Pride colours (photo below).

As a run group they support the #RunAndTalk events and Lucy is also the group’s Mental Health Champion."Our weekly runs are very much a friendly, social 5k so we run to improve not only our physical but also our mental health. The group has a good mix of men and women and it has always been this way."

"We welcome anyone with disabilities and often have Dave guide running for Paul who is blind. There is a wide range of ability and ages, our youngest runner being 14 and the oldest...well I wouldn’t like to say!  There is always a back runner so nobody gets left behind whatever their pace. We also have a few ‘jeffers’ in the group doing walk/run intervals."

Running in a group gives you the motivation to turn up each week whatever the weather. We are all different but come together to run and support and encourage each other, sharing our running adventures. Running with others has such a positive impact and no matter what sort of a day you have had, it definitely makes you smile and laugh more!