Important changes to virtual runs with Running Woman in 2023

Firstly it's important to provide background and context for these changes. We've always believed in complete transparency with our community and it's served us incredibly well over the years, so we continue.

Running had a profound effect on my own health, both physical & mental, following personal tragedy & Running Woman was founded plain & simply to promote the benefits of running to as many women as possible, that's always been my mission from day one and never changed. Lots of what we do is centred around the belief that we can improve peoples wellbeing and that gives us tremendous amount of reward.

I believe we have always provided the best possible quality & service for fantastic value, we've never forced inclusion of charitable donations in any of our events because we wanted them to remain as accessible as possible to as many people as we possibly could, a price that despite multiple cost increases over the last 18 months, we kept the same by finding efficiencies of scale as we've supported literally tens of thousands of women on their journeys. In fact, with our introduction of multi-events in 2022, we even managed to bring the cost down for our most regular of participants.

We've allowed free deferrals, distance changes & cancellations since we launched virtual runs and that has permitted people to carry, increase or decrease their targets, irrespective of what life may have thrown at them and we all know that life has been somewhat turbulent over the past 2-3 years. It's been such a delight to watch our fantastic community support each other through these challenges, and we've been delighted to be able to satisfy almost every request we've ever received.

Now here for the downside... As a result of our unwavering flexibility, we have over the last 3 years had to write-off tens (and tens) of thousands of pounds in challenges that were retrospectively changed, deferred or cancelled and we have personally borne all of this cost, no matter how much we'd like to, we can sadly not continue to do this any longer while continuing to strive for the best quality & value, and I'm hoping that with changes proposed, we can still maintain our ultimate flexibility, in a more sustainable way by introducing the following changes to 2023 virtual runs.

We will freely allow ANY & ALL changes to your distance including deferrals until the last day of the month ie. If you were aiming to do 100km in Jan but actually achieved 125km, as long as you let us know you want to change by 23:59 on 31st January, we will accommodate it (and applaud you for smashing it!)

Submissions will open on the 1st day of the following month, ie. January runs can be submitted from 1st February.

Once the final numbers are locked down on the last day of the month, we will manufacture our beautiful custom medals just as we have done for years and we will aim to get these despatched at the start of the month after submission. Ie. January events medals will be despatched at the start of March. 

We will of course still require evidence of event completion in just the same way as we do today, but, and this is really important, if you do not complete it and have not told us that you'd like to change distances or defer to the following month by the end of the month, we will not be able to do it. We may still be able to get you an event entry for an alternate distance but you will be asked to pay to enter again. We DO NOT want to charge anyone more than absolutely necessary, so please help us out by letting us know.

We hope you all understand the reason for these changes, and as always, we welcome your feedback, RW x