Launch of This Girl Can: Running

This Girl Can is the award winning campaign from Sport England to celebrate active women and encourage more to become involved in exercise.

Monday 22 June saw the launch of This Girl Can: Running, which England Athletics has worked to create with Sport England and a wide range of partners. Our aim is to get more women running, whether they start off with a lap of their local park or nipping out for a short run around the block.

Following the success of the initial This Girl Can campaign, Sport England now intends to encourage even more women to get active by providing them with activity-specific inspirational stories and engaging content. Which is why we are working with them on This Girl Can: Running, we want to show that running is for everyone.

The campaign has the same values as This Girl Can. It is inclusive, speaking to a broad and diverse range of women with various degrees of exposure to, and interest in, running.

Fear of judgement is stopping many women from taking part in exercise. But, as thousands of women are proving, it really doesn't have to.

The message is if you're getting out there, or are curious about giving running a try, then This Girl Can: Running will be with you every step of the way.

Celebration and motivation are the two driving forces behind This Girl Can: Running. By sharing inspirational stories, insightful editorial features and engaging social content, we will help beginner runners get started and keep active runners motivated. This Girl Can: Running exists to empathise with our core audience of women aged 14-40, and inspire them to run regularly.

The new This Girl Can: Running website has been launched at running.thisgirlcan.co.uk and will talk about:

• Passion, sweat and tears: real stories of real women running — always with a positive, non-judgemental attitude
• Women of all ages, shapes and sizes
• Advice and tips for those starting to run or considering to — in plain English, without technical language
• Motivation - reasons to run
• How This Girl Can: Running partners can help women overcome the barriers preventing them from running
• Celebration of the community of women who run
• Running as an enabler and activity that helps people do more of what they love, from listening to music to socialising

We would encourage you to let any friends or family you have who may be having some thoughts about whether they should be getting involved in running, taking their first steps or looking for inspiration and motivation to take a look.

We also want women involved in clubs to share their love of running and encourage others to take up the sport they love.

You can engage with This Girl Can: Running via Twitter by following or tagging@TGCrunning or using the hashtags #thisgirlcanrun #thisgirlcan and/ or #run.

You can visit the This Girl Can: Running Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ThisGirlCanRunning

Remember that if you are a club that wants to encourage more women to get into running you can visit our This Girl Can page for clubs. This has more information on how your club can get involved in the This Girl Can campaign, including our downloadable resource providing advice on how your club can set up running groups for women who are likely to be inspired, motivated or encouraged by theThis Girl Can campaign. See www.englandathletics.org/thisgirlcan-clubs.