Blackburn Harriers Women’s Relay Event runs over 200k

May 4, 2020

The lockdown that is affecting all athletes and indeed all those involved in sport generally, has led to some very innovative ways of maintaining what we love to do best, training to compete against our peers in our event. It’s not easy to maintain focus and enthusiasm for training when there is no competition to look forward to, but maintain it we must, if we are to come back from these difficult times ready to do battle again in Track & Field, Cross Country, Road and Fell competition and all of the Championships associated with these athletic categories.
Blackburn Harriers Rachael Gavin had a cracking idea to try and galvanise the Club’s women endurance athletes into an Individual relay, run over one day, with a collective total target of 200k. This grabbed everyone’s as Rachael describes “The current situation of staying inside and working from home was really beginning to take its toll on me, as it is for many people. I was really struggling to motivate myself to run and putting on my trainers was such an effort. I think we were all missing training together and although we are all in contact over messenger, it isn’t quite the same as the buzz you get from George Woodburn’s Tuesday night sessions, or turning up to a race. To motivate us all, I suggested us doing a ladies relay race, like we would have been doing in the next few weeks. They always give us such a buzz and it’s a great way of everyone getting out. Everyone could either choose between a short leg (30mins) or a long leg (1 hour) and see how far we get. I never thought we’d get as many as we did – 22 ladies in total! It was just like race day! Everyone was buzzing and there was a real team spirit. Such a good Sunday – I can’t wait for the next one, or even better- the real thing!”
The day went fantastically well, with all of the women cheering each leg on via social media and at the end of it, they smashed through their target posting a total of 215.86 Km or 134.14 miles. It was an amazing achievement and they can’t wait to it all over again.