Run for Fun Intro

We've been lucky enough to secure lottery funding to teach a 12 week course to families about health and barefoot running. We've called it "Run for Fun".

The course venue is a lovely little primary school in Croydon which is run by an incredibly open minded, dedicated lady. To our surprise, she needed very little persuasion regarding barefoot running - once we'd explained the principles, she was happy for us to start as soon as possible.

The whole process leading towards the first session was a little daunting. We received a file outlining everything we needed to do for the course: health and safety checks, lesson plans and evaluations, etc. Also included in our info pack were the forms that all the participants will be completing about us at the end of the course. Pressure! However, our project leader at CALAT (Croydon Adult Learning And Training) is a very relaxed, super-efficient lady who is on the end of the phone whenever we need her and seems to have every faith in us!

Our aim with the course is to teach families about the human body and how it works. It's amazing how the majority of people know next to nothing about the one and only vehicle that escorts them through their entire life. We also want to encourage people to use running as a natural, fun way to maintain health and fitness. Many people, particularly adults, have a negative outlook towards running which is largely due to miserable memories of being forced to run cross country at school in the rain, or the pressures of running particular times and distances whilst wearing figure-hugging lycra and the latest high-tech shoes. Running is something personal that we can use as a therapeutic method of organising our thoughts, a way of letting off steam or just to be outside in nature, whether it's for 10 minutes at a time or several hours.

David and I have been teaching health and fitness to individuals and groups for many years, but teaching children and their parents/carers about how to lead a healthy life is a new endeavour for us. It's something we're very passionate about and hope we can help our students to see that their health is probably the most important thing in their life and teach them how to look after it.

Watch this space!