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Let's Lift The Curfew

Lifting The Curfew For Women Runners

Empowering women to feel safe and confident when exercising is essential to allow them to thrive in the winter months...

The clocks change this weekend. And with that change, after months of being able to get out for a run at all times of the day, women will once again find themselves restricted to the available hours of daylight. At least that's my story - as a woman runner I love the flexibility to run when I feel like it in the spring and summer months. It's a different story altogether when the dark nights draw in and early mornings aren't much better.

Empowering women to feel safe and confident when exercising is essential to allow them to thrive and This Girl Can's #LetsLiftTheCurfew campaign hopes to highlight the concerns many women feel when getting active outdoors after dark by calling for a safer and more inclusive experience. The initiative launched in October 2023, to showcase women’s stories and concerns around getting active outdoors in the darker months. Alongside this, it called on wider society to acknowledge their role in making getting active outdoors safer for women.

This year, the campaign is back with a flagship event in Manchester, kickstarting hundreds of local runs across the country. The run will be held in partnership with GM Moving on the evening of Monday 28 October, coinciding with the clocks going back and the return of fewer daylight hours, drawing attention to the need for women’s safety when exercising in the winter months.

Good Gym and England Athletics’ Run Together programme will be supporting the campaign and hosting a number of events during the week beginning 28 October, that anyone can attend.

Why not host your own Let’s Lift The Curfew run, to keep raising awareness of the campaign with your community? Is there a regular evening run that is already hosted in your area that could be turned into a Let's Lift The Curfew event this October?

All you have to do is log your run on Strava – at a time you feel safe doing so – and label it 'Let’s Lift The Curfew'. You can share your Strava activity to your social media with the hashtag #LetsLiftTheCurfew and tag This Girl Can, explaining that these runs are to draw attention to the safety concerns preventing women getting active during darker months.

England Athletics has produced a guide to running in the dark for individual runners and leaders that will help you consider ways to keep safe during your event.

Alongside this, GoodGym has put together a training guide on male allyship to help improve women’s safety at night, which may be helpful to share with male runners joining your run.

If you'd like to know more, visit the This Girl Can website.

Image: This Girl Can Facebook

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