I carried on with my training and attending races, always running on my own. Then came the London Marathon, one of the biggest running events of the year. I was in the red zone and yet again I was on my own! I looked around and there were loads of runners sitting on their own as well, no one talking to each other. Even in the pens before we headed off, hardly anyone was talking to each other. I ran the race but after finishing I just kept thinking about why were all these runners on their own?
It was time to take action! I got onto Facebook and started the Fordy Runs Running Community. The aim was to get Everyday Runners like me, and what I mean by that is all the guys and girls out there who are training for an event/race, getting off the couch to get to 5k, training for their first half or marathon or just for the hell of it! and get them together in one big community.
There are loads of these Facebook running groups online but alot of them just feel like the runners are left out there on their own doing their runs and then they just post a picture from Strava in the group and someone types ‘well done’ …. There is no community spirit!
I wanted to create something different, a place where friendships are made, somewhere the guys can organise and meetup and run together, somewhere they can become invested within the Community and know that if they are struggling or something is going well they have a place to share it and discuss and get support and motivation … oh and most importantly have some fun!
We had our very first ‘Fordy Runs Meet-up’ at the Hackney Half. It was such a cool race because a bunch of us who had never met ran the whole race together, we became friends instantly that day. I had never run with anyone so to run 13.1 miles with my new friends was just such an enlightening experience I just couldn’t look back.
As the Community grew so did the friendships and engagement. At the Great North Run we had a fantastic meal the night before and then over 40 of us ran that event. We had a meet up on the morning of the race which was so cool because the Great North Run is a massive event and can be very intimidating if it is your first time. Once again I ran with my friends and was bumping into other ‘Fordy Runners’ as I tackled the 13.1 miles!
On January 12th 2019 I challenged the Community to get out and run on day and see if we can run collectively 1000 miles We had meet ups up and down the country, we had runners in other countries taking part and we ran collectively over 1700 miles, which is basically one end of the UK to the other and back! We all then went to the pub after!
This sums up our running Community and why it is so awesome. We are just Everyday Runners, running for our own reasons but collectively we have each other and we know whether we be at an event or running down the canal actually we are not on our own because we are part of the Fordy Runs Running Community!
#DoSomethingAwesome
