Back to the Start

Over the last year, running has experienced a boom like never before. During the lockdowns, more than 8 million people pulled on their trainers and hit the road, many for the first time. People experienced the huge benefits to mental and physical wellbeing that comes with the simple act of running.

However, as a race organiser, you'll know the boom in running is not yet translating into participation in events. Entries for events over the next few months are down. Way down. Many event organisers are not confident of even being able to survive through to next year.

It's clear that public confidence in mass-participation events is still some way off pre-pandemic levels. However, research commissioned by Parkrun as well as findings from a survey by Mass Participation World has shown running events to be ultra low-risk.

So we're launching 'Back to the Start', an awareness campaign with 3 key messages:

Events are back
Events are safe
Events need support NOW!

The campaign will live on Instagram and will encourage people to enter their favourite events and share their goals with friends. Simple! There is no requirement for bookings to be made on findarace.com, this campaign is in support of the industry as a whole.

According to our research, the industry has seen a drop in booking revenue of £65m over the course of the pandemic. Fingers crossed we can now start to rebuild.

How to help

We'll be working hard to spread the word over the next couple of weeks, helped by a range of partners including Good Gym, Women's Running, #runsome and Run For Heroes.

To have the greatest impact, we need the campaign to be picked up as widely as possible. For that to happen we need the industry to get involved and help spread the word.

A man is running outdoors during a race, wearing a white t-shirt with "TEAM CARLOS" printed on it. He is pointing forward with one finger. Text on the image reads "#BACKTOTHESTART Back to the Start I'm in: Brixton 10k." The Instagram username is partially visible.

In the words of an Event Organiser, Adele at Crazy Legs Events, "in the current times it's important we try to work together as much as possible." We couldn't agree more.

Share the campaign with your audiences by email and on social channels and encourage them to sign up to your events. The campaign page is here and images and suggested copy can be found here.

GO TO CAMPAIGN