If you were lurking on twitter or Facebook last night, you might have seen a furore kicking off about the Spen 20 race. According to her account, a lady called Netty was pulled off the course by a marshal after a mile and a half, who told her she was too slow (she was, at that very early point, doing around 12 minutes a mile) and that the race “wasn’t for people like her”.

Let’s get the defence out of the way. Any club that puts on a race is entirely within their rights to set the rules. If they want cut off times so volunteer marshals aren’t out on the course for a very long time, if they want qualifying standards, if they want to attract a certain type of runner – fine. Absolutely their right. Put that in the rules. Apparently there was an “opportunity” for slower runners to start earlier, unmarshalled, and two other entrants did this. Perhaps Netty should have done this too.

What you shouldn’t do, however, is take people’s money and then decide on a cut-off time (having not put one on the race entry site) once the race has already started. And do so rudely, to boot.

At this point, a simple apology would have defused the incident. The club, I’m told, have a good reputation for being inclusive and have a big youth division. So an “I’m sorry if the marshal seemed a bit rude but we were worried about length of time on the course/ perhaps you could have started earlier/ it was health and safety/ insert reason here” would have been the sensible move. Instead, the club – or at least some of its leading members – went on the offensive. One club member questioned whether it would be a good idea to blacklist her, and make sure she doesn’t do other similar events. Names were called. Nice work in representing your club, chaps.

Does it matter? It’s one event, one marshal – the club are on the defensive and understandably want to look after their members. Well, yes, it does. Because if one single person is put off running or racing by this – and I’ve seen evidence enough over the past 12 hours that plenty of people are, at least on the Run Mummy Run Facebook group of which I am a member – then it matters.



This is precisely what the This Girl Can campaign is all about – setting your own goals, disregarding the naysayers and the voices both inside and outside your head that tell you to stop, you’re no runner, this isn’t for you. We don’t all have to be competitive – the vast majority of us run for ourselves and ourselves alone. Unless you are Usain Bolt or Dennis Kimetto, there’s always someone faster than you – that’s why you are always aiming for a personal best, not a world record.



And is 12-minute mile-ing even that slow? It’s hardly going to trouble the record books, no, but it’s considerably quicker than the slowest runner in the same race the previous year, who finished in just over five hours. In 2012, three people finished in over four hours. Given that there will be thousands of people finishing the London marathon in around five hours or more, it’s hardly an unusually slow time.

Imagine the same situation applied to children. Would you not be appalled if a child was told not to turn up at sports day because they weren’t fast enough? Netty is a middle aged woman – so is she supposed to just give up? At what point do we stop saying it’s effort that matters, and start demanding results? Who knows, perhaps Netty wants to go faster and smash her times. How is she going to, without putting those miles in in the first place?

We should encourage anyone to run who wants to – for their health, for their happiness, for whatever reason they want to do it. The running community should be open and welcoming at all levels, from the hare to the tortoise.

There’s a jpeg I see often – of the ghastly “inspirational quote on pretty landscape” type – which may be irredeemably naff but is nevertheless true: “A 12-minute mile is the same distance as a six-minute mile”. Anyone who can run, or jog – whatever arbitrary label you want to apply to it – for 20 miles is already doing better, fitness-wise, than the vast majority of the population, and should be applauded.

When I started running three years ago, I couldn’t make it to the end of the road without leaning on the lamp post for a breather. Have I sped up? Yes. Would I have done, if I hadn’t been encouraged, supported, cheered on by family and by my inclusive, welcoming, friendly running club, for whom this sort of thing would be anathema? No.

One of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me was that I was their running role model. And that’s not because I’m about to climb on a podium – it’s because I’m an average mother of two who started running pretty recently and gets some half decent times now. If someone you can actually relate to – not a professional athlete, but someone you look at and think “actually, she’s like me” does a 20-mile race, or a good half marathon time – you think, “I could do that”.

So don’t stop running Netty – you are a role model. And most of the running community is firmly behind you.