Pull on your trainers for International Women's Day
Wearside women are being urged to pull on their running shoes this weekend.
The Herrington parkrun is a free event which welcomes runners of all ages and abilities to cover 5km around Herrington Country Park at 9am each Saturday morning.
The majority of runners are men but this weekend, organisers are joining forces with national female fitness promotion campaign This Girl Can to celebrate International Women's Day (IWD) 2022.
And they are urging women across Sunderland to dig out their trainers, don their best purple (the IWD colour) and do their bit to address the gender imbalance.
Lisa Form is this weekend’s run director and said the number of runners taking part each weekend was beginning to return to prepandemic levels.
“It was a bit slow to start off with when we first came back but now we have got about 180 people a week, so it is similar numbers to where it was before.”
The proportion of female runners had started to pick up in recent weeks but the men still outnumbered the women.
“We did have a little bit of a dip in the number of women,” said Lisa.
"We had a few weeks where our female participation rate was going down.
"Pre-lockdown it was 40 to 45 per cent, but it did drop. In the last few weeks though, it has been back up to that 45 per cent mark.”
But while female participation has been returning to normal, Lisa and the team are aware that some familiar faces are still missing.
“We actually noticed from going through our photographs that there are some regular women participants who have not returned since lockdown,” she said.
"We are hoping this weekend’s event will give them a little nudge.”
The parkrun is free and people can just turn up on the day, but Lisa is urging anyone who fancies trying their hand to register through parkrun.org.uk
"People don’t need to register but it is free to do so and it means they can take part in our results recording, so they will get their time – that way, if it is their first time and they want to keep going, they can track their progress,” she said.