Celebrating the girlie-fication of running

A wonderful place where French braids and fuelling strategies can blissfully co-exist

Me and my girlies. I don’t know any of them but we shared something more special than any unflattering race photo can capture

You know that half-marathon I was dreading? It was fine! In fact, I even enjoyed it! The weather was glorious, I kept a pretty steady pace throughout and came in at a time that was a way off my fastest but also a way off my slowest, which was most unexpected given the various setbacks in my training. Sorry for making such a fuss.

One of the reasons London Landmarks was so great? THE GIRLS! By which I mean, THE GROWN-ASS WOMEN! The place was teeming with them, not just the race itself but the sidelines too. And it was as glorious as the weather.

As a running event, London Landmarks is girlier than most, and there are a few reasons for that. One is that the main organiser is Tommy’s, the pregnancy and baby charity, so huge numbers of the 20,000 runners who took part last Sunday did so in support of the people who helped them through some of the darkest days of their lives. At every big race I’ve done over the past few years, I’ve been moved to almost-tears by runners and spectators wearing t-shirts paying tribute to dearly missed loved ones. At London Landmarks, many of these loved ones are babies. You can feel the emotion, the strength and the sisterhood in the air.

Then there’s the fact that the race is now accredited by She Races, a brilliant organisation who demand more inclusivity on every start line, whether that’s by ensuring toilets are equipped with period stuff or allowing pregnancy-related deferrals. It’s insane to me that this isn’t just standard practice, tbh, but until it is, the existence of She Races is crucial.

As a result of all of the above, more than 60% of London Landmarks runners are women — which is the reverse of most mass running situations, from my local parkrun to big city marathons, where men usually dominate.

Until 1975, women in the UK were banned from running competitively over 6000 metres and, when I was at secondary school in the 90s, I remember that girls weren’t allowed to run the 400 metres in case our ovaries fell out or something (having googled, there is vague evidence on Mumsnet of this not just being some weird my-school thing). Of course, I was delighted about this at the time since any opportunity to avoid exerting myself in front of my peers was a cause for celebration but, 30 years on, I know that it will have contributed to my feeling that running wasn’t for me.

Oh there she is all sweaty and frizzy with another bloody medal

Now, lots of women run, but every casual jog might as well be a steeplechase, as we dodge barriers that men don’t have to think about, from the eternal quest to find a supportive sports bra that doesn’t chafe, to the things that having children can do to our bodies, minds and schedules, to the fact that women runners get heckled, followed, harassed, assaulted and murdered a hell of a lot more than men.

I can't go for a run because

Bit of a downer, right? Which is why what I’m seeing now — women not just running, but having fun with it, too — is so damned beautiful. After a lifetime of being pitted against each other, we’ve realised that coming together to run is powerful. Sure, sinewy Simon knocking out a 16 minute 5K in his Vaporflys might not get it, but it’s not for him. It’s for us. Running has been well and truly girlie-fied and nowhere was this more evident than on the sidelines at London Landmarks last weekend, because where there are women running, there are gaggles of mates cheering them on, shrieking their names and wielding cute, funny, heartfelt signs.

Love is… carrying a tambourine around all day to wave it at your mate for 3 seconds

I’d like to say I was running far too fast to take pictures of some of the banners I saw, but it’s more that I had sticky hands from a messy encounter with an energy gel, so instead I’ll just tell you about a few of the highlights.

First, of course, there were dozens of the ubiquitous “you got this” and its more grammatically acceptable hun “you’ve got this”, along with the very English “you’ve bloody got this” (if Daniel Cleaver was cheering on Bridget Jones in the as-yet-unimagined fifth book in the series, Bridget Jones: Arse Over Tit this is the sign he’d be holding).

Variations on the theme of “Hot girls run half marathons” were popular (I made this apply to me by pretending they said “Hot perimenopausal women run half marathons”), along with so many nods to Aperol Spritz that it was all I could think about afterwards (by Tuesday, I’d succumbed. Thanks Alex!).

As ever, there were plenty of Taylor Swift references: “You’re in your running era” is an obvious but still cute one, but I saw cleverer Tay-kes too that I’ve now forgotten. For the first time in my experience, though, there were even more plays on all things Charli XCX (“running and it’s completely different but also still brat”).

However, my personal favourite and all the proof we need that this was a big day for the millennial and older Gen Z running girlies, was a poster displaying this image:

Sometimes I am filled with regret at not running when I was younger. Maybe then I would have had a gaggle of gal pals waving signs with Dawson’s Creek and Sailor Jerry’s references (I did, of course, have my best mate popping up at multiple points during London Marathon with Blur-related signs). To be honest, though, even if I had been an avid runner in my twenties, I can’t imagine my friends wholesomely cheering me on: on Sunday mornings they were busy hiding under their indie sleaze fringes while discreetly exiting the bedrooms of emotionally unavailable bass players in Whitechapel house shares. Back then, it seemed like only swishy-ponytailed Clapham gals were runners, and they weren’t my people.

But even though I didn’t run until I was nearly 40, it doesn’t make me jealous when I see all the running girlies on Instagram jetting around the world to run big races without any childcare issues to contend with and making the highs and lows of running feel accessible and fun. Instead, it fills me with hope that getting active won’t seem so impossible to girls more like younger me. Run-fluencers like Celina Stephenson, Runs With Emily and my personal favourite Hannah Trenches — very funny, would like to be her mate even though I’m probably old enough to be her great great grandmother — are championing slow running (although I prefer to call our sort of pace mediocre).

They’re showing that it’s OK to spend as much time on the perfect French braid as the perfect fuelling strategy.

They’re showing that you can care about getting a faster 5K time, but you can also walk if you want to. It’s a hobby, not an exam.

And some running girlies are even showing that you can do a marathon the morning after your hen do AND COME THIRD. Seriously, did anyone else see this incredible story last week? While I was coming 15,537th at London Landmarks, Emily Marchant was knocking out a sub-3 hour marathon in Brighton on four hours sleep, with her loyal, hungover friends presenting her with increasingly silly fancy dress items when she zoomed past them sweating off shots and leaving plenty of sinewy Simons eating her dust.

That’s the the sheer brilliance of the girlie-fication of running right there. (Incidentally, it should have been what the Swiftie 5K was all about too, but they cocked it up.)