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Scott Cain - Runsome
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Meet the Hosts - Joe Williams & Scott Kane
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to today's episode. Hope you are well. I am your host Joe Williams and in this episode I am speaking with Scott Kane. Scott is the founder of Run Friendly and the Run Some campaign.
What is the Run Some Campaign?
00:00:13
Speaker
Run Some is a campaign to inspire more of us to run some everyday journeys, errands and commutes and this really got me thinking about some of the journeys that I take.
00:00:24
Speaker
how I could participate in run some or running some and why I would. This is a bit different to our other podcasts to date. I really enjoy chatting with Scott. I hope you enjoy it too. We'll be back again this week with a second podcast. So look out for that and in the meantime, stay safe and well and see you on the next episode.
Local Insights: Shropshire & Half Marathon
00:00:50
Speaker
Morning Scott. Morning Joe.
00:00:54
Speaker
How are you? I'm very well. And thanks for the thanks for the invite onto your fantastic podcast. Thank you. Yeah, I am good as well. Thank you for asking. Yes, you are indeed a fellow shops allowed. I am here in Shrewsbury as we speak.
00:01:18
Speaker
have a fine old stomping ground. We probably shouldn't talk about too many nights out in Trosbury in the 1980s, which we could do and possibly have done in the past. But yeah, I'm from, well, actually a mining village, would you believe, in Shropshire called Hylie, or Eyley, as we would have called it, which is
00:01:43
Speaker
sort of near Bridge North I guess for those that, but to anyone who's never been to Shropshire it's sort of in between Birmingham and Wales is probably the best way to describe it. Yes, we are the through route, that's actually something that I say to people when I encourage them to come and
00:02:01
Speaker
take part in the shoot, you'll be half marathon, don't just drive through Shropshire on your way to Wales for a day at the beach, actually stop, it's a really nice place.
Co-hosting UK Run Chat Hour
00:02:11
Speaker
Shall we do a bit of promotion of Shropshire, why people should come? Well, the bridge north, for example, it's got a castle, well, the remaining walls of a castle, which lean more than the leaning tower of Pisa. Yes, as do...
00:02:29
Speaker
How do the majority of the 600 grade two listed buildings in Shrewby Town Centre? There we go. Basically, if you like walls that lean, you know, there's nowhere better than Shropshire. Yeah, amazing. We'll have the air. I know the local tourist lady, she'll be giving us a ring. She'll be, as the handy guy once put it, she'll be as chuffed as nuts. Very good.
00:02:56
Speaker
Cool, so thanks for coming on, Scott. It's great to have you come on. I know you were on the chat hour on Sunday, your first experience of a UK-run chat hour, what did you think? It was definitely my first experience of, you know, what do you call it, co-hosting, co-anchoring? I don't know what the phrase is anyway, joining the community. It was, well, I think I said to you at the time, for my
00:03:23
Speaker
perhaps not particularly evolved brain it was it was amazing and bamboozling and fantastic and uh in equal measure and uh yeah the conversation's carried on ever since so uh yeah it's been it's been simply brilliant uh that that run some as a campaign got the opportunity to um well to talk about the campaign and and some of the things it's trying to achieve and running mares and other things so yeah it was uh a very warm and welcoming group of people actually yeah
00:03:50
Speaker
Good, good, yeah. It is quite bamboozling. It's a bit, you can get a bit busy on that, aren't it? Well, I mean, I think busy is like one of those things where people say busy to you and then you go, yeah, I think I can handle busy. And then we're basically, it was like the floodgates opened. And then when you thought the floodgates were open, that was basically the warmup. And then, you know, it was like trying to keep up with a, with a, you know, it's like you'd gone to Italy in Kenya and, you know,
00:04:18
Speaker
the elites basically start running and you think, oh, I can keep up with them. And then you realize that's their kind of pre-warm up. And you're, you know, in a bit of bother just trying to keep up. And then all of a sudden they go into sort of the next gear and then they shoot off into the distance. It definitely felt a little bit like that. It was like, I was all right for about the first 12 seconds. And then, and then it was like, wow, this is, this is so many conversations all at once. What do I do? Which one do I get involved with?
00:04:42
Speaker
So if I didn't reply to anybody on behalf of RunSome, we apologize. And that was entirely my failing of being not able to keep pace with the kip chokies of social media. Let me reassure you and everyone that we've been doing this for years myself and
00:05:04
Speaker
and my ambassadors and we never keep up so it's um yeah to be expected.
Scott's Journey: From Upbringing to Urban Innovation
00:05:10
Speaker
Give us some background on yourself Scott and introduce us to to run friendly and run some please. Okay yeah brilliant so um well I guess sticking with the Shropshire theme um I think maybe the reason I got into running was because
00:05:28
Speaker
my lovely parents were disinclined to ever take me anywhere. And if you grow up in a rural place, particularly in my case, it was like 1970s and 80s Shropshire. There was lots of places you couldn't get to other than like on sort of dirt. It makes it sound very archaic, but it was like dirt tracks with like rocks and things. And I had
00:05:53
Speaker
First I had a racer bike, which basically as soon as you showed it the road and get a puncture. And then I got a grifter bike. Don't know if anyone remembers a grifter. Anyway, they're like a precursor, a precursor to a BMX. So they were considered pretty robust.
00:06:11
Speaker
but they were also made out of solid steel of some kind. And so as soon as you did get a puncture, it was a nightmare. You had to carry it for like four miles and it was the heaviest thing ever. So I think basically the reason I got into running was I realized, you know, it was a way of getting places, you know, going to see people do things, get stuff done. Back in my back in the 19, you know,
00:06:35
Speaker
early 1980s, I suppose. And then, you know, like everyone else, I probably had a fallow period when I went to university and other things and didn't run quite so much. But then picked it up as a sort of latter life run commuter, you know, running to work and running to running to get around places. And I suppose that that's where the personal interest in in running kind of grew from and got into running, you know,
00:07:01
Speaker
I guess enjoying races like, you know, like your very own shows behalf. But then I also then as a job ended up basically helping, they call them place leaders, but think about like mayors and city leaders and the like for your kind of local councils, local authorities, but not just in the UK, but also in other parts of the world.
00:07:27
Speaker
think about the kind of places they wanted to create, you know, so, you know, did they want them to be greener? Did they want them to be more active? Did they want them to have better air quality? Did they want them to have, you know, different kind of planning and design, you know, all sorts of things about the places that they wanted to create as elected people?
00:07:52
Speaker
And then how could you use innovation of all sorts, you know, so design, digital, you know, ways of engaging people and creating different kind of conversations, whatever it might be. So that helped them realize that kind of vision and often do it in a way that you kind of work with different communities and people who, you know.
00:08:12
Speaker
live and work and kind of play and go out in those places. And so I did that for what's called the UK Government's Innovation Agency, it's called Innovate UK, set up their cities team there and then help set up what's called a, well it's called a Catapult Centre, which is basically an innovation centre and it's now called the Connected Places Catapult and it's basically how can you help
00:08:39
Speaker
exactly on that theme, how can you help places thrive economically, socially, environmentally? But also how can you help businesses in the UK meet the changing needs of cities and places? So that might be new technologies, that might be anything from kind of like autonomous vehicles or cargo bikes or whatever it might be, the sense of place, but also
00:09:05
Speaker
you know, how do you design and plan different types of building? How do you make them more energy efficient? Whatever it might be. And so I did that for about
00:09:14
Speaker
in total nearly about 10 years. And then I still do work with the Connected Places Catapult and Innovate UK around those kind of things.
Blending Passion with Profession: Active Travel Businesses
00:09:23
Speaker
So I kind of blended those personal interests and those professional interests to create essentially a couple of businesses that are about active travel, which is the collective term for kind of walking, cycling, and I think running should be part of that too. Yeah.
00:09:41
Speaker
So am I right in saying, when I've read things in papers, et cetera, about active travelers, running gets missed out quite a bit. Is that right or not? It is. It's like the Cinderella. Well, actually, in active travel terms, they sort of, which I should say is a sort of idea whose time has come, you could put it. So a combination of the terrible pandemic
00:10:09
Speaker
and the implications that has for kind of what both why we move and how we move, it meant that
00:10:20
Speaker
you know, if we cast our minds back to the first lockdown, you know, back in sort of March 2020, there was lots of guidance from government and media and others basically saying, if you can avoid making a journey, you know, avoid making that journey. And if you are going to make a journey, because you have to, because it's essential, can you, you know, walk it
00:10:45
Speaker
or get on a bike, you know, do it actively because you can fit in your kind of exercise as well as the journey itself. And you can then stress the roads less. So essentially, you know, blue light vehicles, the roads are freer for them or for people that really don't have any other choice than to get in a car. And sort of listening to that, I guess I thought, well, it's interesting because if you think of any
00:11:09
Speaker
you know, place where you live, where you've ever lived, be it rural or be it, you know, a city or a town, you know, you do, you see runners out everywhere. And at that time you saw runners out a lot, you know, more than, you know, one in five, going to Sport England, one in five UK adults was running once or twice a week at that point. And I thought, well, if we could get what's something like that 11 million people
00:11:37
Speaker
to swap out just one or two car trips a week, you know, short journey, you know, go into the pickups and pick up a pint of milk or whatever it might be, or, you know, go to visit your mum, whatever it might be. Then that would make a massive difference actually in and of itself. So it's almost like runners, what could you do in terms of how you travel and using your running interest and skills
00:12:02
Speaker
you know, to help you make those kind of journeys. Could that be something that we could make happen? And I happen to have a very good and timely conversation with the team at Runner's World. And they basically were like, right, let's do it, let's do a campaign. And so we basically, we basically set it up and it launched in September. So it took a bit of time to get off the ground, but actually we've got some brilliant partners involved, you know, who have, you know,
00:12:30
Speaker
I guess, help take that message to their communities. And yeah, we're enjoying the thrill of running a campaign whereby we're trying to get running recognised by UK government funders, the Department for Transport and others, as a legitimate form of active travel. And yeah, it's brilliant to combine with UK run chat to try and get that message across as well. Cool. So that is what the Run Some campaign is in essence.
00:12:59
Speaker
I mean, it's one of those things where almost its simplicity is it's genius because it's one of those things whereby
00:13:12
Speaker
There are a few brilliant academics who study the topic of running everyday journeys, or running as a way of commuting. And probably the most notable is a chap called Simon Cook, Dr. Simon Cook, and he's at Birmingham City University. And he did brilliantly a research project called Geographies, J-O-G, Raffi's, so nice problem, like a pun, don't we, Joe?
00:13:38
Speaker
And basically, in that, he interviewed lots of people who were currently people who ran everyday journeys and run commuted to and from work, for example, as well as other runners who didn't. And unlike the barriers that maybe prevent people from cycling, like the need for safe, protected infrastructure, say, like cycle lanes, or
00:14:05
Speaker
secure bike parking at the other end or both ends, whatever it might be of your journey. The biggest barrier for runners is that they've not considered doing it. It's just the idea of it is something they've never really thought about. And the difference between the people who do it and who often then love it and think this is a brilliant way of me fitting in something I love and saving time and, you know, adding some extra volume in terms of mileage or whatever it might be.
00:14:34
Speaker
is that once they've kind of made slight adaptations to their life and fitted it in, they're like, this is fantastic. And the people who haven't are just people who haven't thought about doing it. So it's like, never is there a better idea for a campaign than of just trying to get across the possibility of running some of these local trips and watch people do it. They tend to like it and they tend to think, right, I'm going to do more of it. And then, you know, it sort of snowballs.
00:14:59
Speaker
Okay, so I'm gonna come back to the barriers in a minute. Just before that, is there two parts to this? So is this about, because you've mentioned your relationships in the cities teams, is this about places being able to facilitate this more frequent human powered commute or everyday journey?
00:15:28
Speaker
or is it about, they go together, but is it more about motivating people to participate in it? What's your primary aim with the London Song campaign? Yeah, so I guess it's like most things where we know that if we can make it seem something that is possible,
00:15:54
Speaker
and find other people who each of us identify with, more people will do it. So there's almost no barriers stopping anyone who can run from running commuting in some part or running an everyday journey. Because the act of stepping one foot ahead of the other is something that people are doing already. And if you take, for example, a quarter of all journeys are a mile or less.
00:16:23
Speaker
So that's a very runnable distance for most runners. And two thirds, so over 66% of car trips in UK towns and cities, in the major UK towns and cities, are less than a park run. They're less than three miles. So again, if you think about three quarters of car journeys,
00:16:46
Speaker
It's eminently for most every runner, there will be at least a couple of journeys in their day or their week that they probably could swap out. Particularly right now when most of us, very many more people are kind of working from home, some of the barriers that did exist like where can I get a shower when I get to work or I need to look smart or whatever, those have sort of been removed because many of the times where we end up is back at home.
00:17:13
Speaker
So there is that definitely part it's like it is possible and viable and it really enjoyable and often becomes the sort of best part of your day in a way because you've kind of you know you're doing the two birds with one stone type thing. That's the first part and we want to double the number as a campaign we want to double the number of people who run everyday journeys from
Barriers to Running as Active Travel
00:17:33
Speaker
240,000 to just over half a million so that's sort of campaign number one campaign aim number one.
00:17:40
Speaker
And the campaign number two is, can we positively influence UK government that has earmarked significant funds? Couple of billion quid.
00:17:58
Speaker
to fund active travel investments, which typically in their terms mean cycling and walking, can they within their funding reference, what they put money to, but also what they're encouraging in terms of their public campaigns, can they include running within that? Because we don't think it's every journey can be run,
00:18:23
Speaker
but not every journey can be walked or cycled either. So we think it's part of the mix of how we can have more active, healthy travel at a time when active and healthy travel is really important. Yeah. So I went to a conference the year before last and Andy Burnham from Manchester was speaking at it and he was speaking about
00:18:49
Speaker
the infrastructure and the money, I forget the figures that they were going to spend in Manchester or bringing in cycling. I remember sitting there at the time thinking, well, what about running? What needs to be different for running to be included then as it passes? This is part of both the opportunity and also part of the barrier, because in one sense, as you've quite rightly pointed out,
00:19:17
Speaker
By putting in infrastructure like safe pavements, for example, which are for, and simply for walking, runners benefit from that. So therefore we're almost like, even though runners aren't intended to be the beneficiaries, we also benefit.
00:19:31
Speaker
And so in one sense, and you could say that you could say to a degree, the same is true of cycling lanes, because, you know, if you've got protected pavement and then you've also got a protected cycle lane. Well, as a runner, I don't know what you do, but, you know, I live near the Elephant and Castle in London with my family. And, you know, if the pavement is busy, you know, I'll basically
00:19:56
Speaker
in the way that bikes are coming towards me, I'll always be on that side of the road. I'll jump into the cycling lane for a bit and then hop back on the pavement. So in some ways, and you see lots of other people doing that as well. So in many ways runners also benefit from investment in cycling. So that's fantastic.
00:20:17
Speaker
part of the problem then when you're speaking to people like the Department of Transport or you know you know in this instance say the the boroughs or the Mayor of London's team is they'll go okay brilliant so you're already benefiting from the investments we're making so therefore that's enough isn't it.
00:20:38
Speaker
And then the next question then is, well, actually, there are also some things that are specific or particular to different runners. So not everybody who runs is exactly the same. There are some sort of bearings between that. So for example, not everyone is lucky enough. If you work on a building site, or if you work in a shop, or all sorts of different things, not everyone, if you work in a branch of a bank,
00:21:07
Speaker
Yeah. Many of those places don't have any facilities for you to be able to get changed and get on with your day. So those that they call end of trip facilities, they're missing. And if you wanted to, you know, end your trip in a place where you could grab a shower, if you go into a gym and just ask, can I come in for a shower? They'll say, yeah, you can come in and have a day pass and it'll cost you a tenner. And you're like, well, I don't want to have a tenner for a shower. So therefore your
00:21:34
Speaker
you know you're faced with the other options which are kind of things like well do I just go in the toilet and you know.
00:21:39
Speaker
You know, have a splash, wash, whatever. And you end up feeling a bit kind of grimy and grubby and a bit like you're kind of doing something that's a bit wrong. Well, so therefore one of the things that we would love to see included is essentially they call it facilities only passes. You know, the ability to be able to avail yourself of facilities in leisure centers and gyms, but all over the place for a very affordable rate. And we think that should be part of what government encourages. Equally, say for example,
00:22:08
Speaker
There's something in cycling, which you might have heard of, it's called the cycling to work scheme. So basically what it means is it's a tax efficient way through your salary that you can get your bike paid for or things that relate to cycling.
00:22:26
Speaker
Why isn't that equally applicable to people who run? Because if you run and you buy a running rucksack, if you buy a good one like from Arm or Osprey or whoever it may be, that's nearly 100 quid. If you're doing a number of miles, you probably want to be having at least two pairs of trainers on the go.
00:22:46
Speaker
Um, you know, trainers, depending which ones you go for again, you know, let's say they're around a hundred pounds each, you know, these things over the course of a year, you know, a protect, you know, windproof base layers, all the stuff that over time as a runner, you work. Well, if you want to be refreshing those, um, so you've got them to be able to do this stuff pretty regularly. This all adds up. So, so why can't we have a, an equivalent, um, to cycle to work, which is basically how
00:23:15
Speaker
helps runners pay for the stuff that they want to pay for, but in a way that's kind of tax efficient and affordable to them. So I would say that there are some very particular, and we're working with some people called UK Active, which is the sort of member rep body for kind of gyms and leisure providers in the UK, precisely on both of those two things as part of the Run Some campaign.
00:23:35
Speaker
So yes, there are definitely distinctive things also, which I'm sure many in the UK run chat hour, there were some brilliant things that came up. So those are the things now that we need to take forward to do something about, I think, as a campaign.
00:23:52
Speaker
So that was because you asked, how might you change where you live to make it better for all runners, or even those that don't know the runners yet? And just what you've just said there, I've worked at corporates, and I remember the cycle to work scheme being pushed, and I was looking at the bikes and thinking, well, there's some amazing discounts on there. But what you've just said really made me think, you tot up.
00:24:13
Speaker
the amount of money that you spend, if you are running regularly each year, it easily equates to what the cost of a decent bike could be, couldn't it? Totally, yes. I mean, if you could include within it, say...
00:24:25
Speaker
end number of passes to be able to grab showers. So not just at your place of work, but nearby or when you go for other meetings or whatever it might be. If you add that to the rock sack, to the shoes, to the gear, running watch and other things like that, you very easily get to between one and two grand, which is the amount that many people spend on a bike and lights and so forth. So it isn't like it's a sort of,
00:24:54
Speaker
order of magnitude difference. It's actually pretty much in the same ballpark. And it's almost like we're giving preference to one thing ahead of another, where if you look at what's accessible to people, what's possible, there are more people in the UK currently who run than who ride bikes. So why are you serving one of those communities?
00:25:18
Speaker
in a very helpful way and ignoring the other one totally. And that's not to say that we think running is better than cycling. We think walking, running, cycling, they all have their merits and their joys and each of us can do each of them at different times. So that's, you know, that's all we're really calling for, you know, a bit of a kind of equity and fairness, I guess. Yeah.
00:25:42
Speaker
So it was interesting to hear those stats before about the amount of journeys and how far we travel, which makes sense to me. I'm sat here thinking about it now. I drive to the shop for the bread and milk, and I have a shop. There's two within a third of a mile. And there's a pharmacy right next door to it. There's the post office, probably another 100 meters further down the road. All of those are
00:26:13
Speaker
walkable, slow, runnable, cyclable. And yeah, it's habitual just to jump in the car and take two minutes rather than... I mean, that time didn't be productive as well, couldn't it? The amount of podcasts and audiobooks and things like that, you could actually listen to in that 15 minute, 20 minute walk rather than jumping in the car for a couple of minutes. It doesn't have to be
00:26:37
Speaker
Exactly. It may not see you having an input and just taking time out for a day. It's exactly that. It's also like, well, I think right now, more than ever.
00:26:50
Speaker
Our mental wellbeing and our mental health is, you know, it's really important we find the time, you know, if people are balancing like we are, you know, like a bit of homeschooling, a bit of like, you know, probably, you know, cooking for the family more, you know, jobs to be done around the house, fitting around work.
00:27:11
Speaker
One of the things that often is easy to cut out, and we did some research about this as well, particularly amongst people who've had kids and have young parents, let's say, parents of young kids, is one of the things that often gets cut out is that bit of extra time that you have for yourself, which you might then go for a run, or you might
00:27:35
Speaker
might be something else like, you know, might go to the gym or do yoga, whatever it might be. Those things tend to be the things that get cut out first. And then as a consequence, our capacity to be able to deal with the rest of the challenges and be productive and, you know, keep well are the things that suffer. So it's almost like if you can find a way of getting, as you say, it's a brilliant, but this kind of habit thing. So it's like, if you can deliberately think, okay, well, I could run that instead, or I could walk it or cycle it.
00:28:04
Speaker
you can begin to form new habits. And so that's why, like anything else, they have these things called cues and rewards, which are basically what habits are made up of. So your cue could be, well, is there anything stopping you wearing your running gear or at least something that you can strip off very easily to go for a run for most of your everyday stuff? So you might call it athleisure wear or whatever it might be. Well, that's one of the things that makes it much easier. Because if you do then think, well, actually,
00:28:35
Speaker
I couldn't go and do it. You've almost ready to go. You don't have to then go, I've got to get changed. That's one of the things that right now with many people working from home makes it much easier. Or another one basically put a note by the car keys, which basically says, you know,
00:28:51
Speaker
run, question mark, is it a vulnerable thing? And these are like so simple things, but actually they're sort of things which have the potential to kind of make you think twice in that moment and then go, well, actually, I'm gonna run it instead of whatever it might be. And then one of the things that I think also has been shown is that in terms of research is that one of the things people find really value about a commute is the sort of, it allows you a bit of time between your home life and your work life.
Building Running Habits & Mental Health
00:29:20
Speaker
And right now, more than ever, that's sort of something that people are missing out on. So we're seeing this fabulous thing where people are almost creating a commute, where people who are good at habits and forming habits or breaking bad habits, if you will, they're almost going, OK, it's 8.30. I'm going to commute to work. Basically, they go for a run. It might be just a loop or they might go and do a task, whatever it is, and then come back. But by the time they sit down to do whatever they're going to do that day in terms of work,
00:29:48
Speaker
they've done their commute and it's given them that bit of thinking time, or like you say, the ability to listen to a podcast like this, or whatever it might be. So I think if anybody's listening, thinking, what could I do? I think there are some simple things you could just try and see how it goes.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah, I'm a big advocate of that because I work from home and when you're in the mists of work and everything, life pressures, etc, family and all the rest of it, you can walk from one bedroom to your to your office, your bedroom office, spend hours and hours and hours in there for the day, go downstairs, eat tea and
00:30:29
Speaker
you haven't moved. And those commuting times, it's good for your head because you just process and compartmentalize your day, don't you? And be that going to work or coming away from work. So if you are at home, I'm just thinking of solutions to the barriers as well with you here. You actually could walk around the block before you start work and at the end of your day just to
00:30:56
Speaker
switch on switch off have that fresh air exactly yeah exactly and also it's like um you know that's just forming a different pattern and you might then think well i'm gonna do it for five minutes and then you might the next day think actually i'm gonna leave a bit earlier and then what you might then do is you then get into a slight habit where it's like well actually i can fit in a couple of miles run and before you know it you've sort of slightly recrafted the rhythm of your day where it becomes
00:31:20
Speaker
scheduled in, in a way, or part of the rhythm of that day, which is right now with so many other patterns being disrupted and lost, it's almost like we have... It's really, really easy to let all of that slip. Personally, I'm running less than I have done ever, I think, right now.
00:31:39
Speaker
and you know down to about 15-16 miles a week I think at the moment last couple of months and that's been down from typically around 40 to 50 and it's precisely because I used to run
00:31:51
Speaker
to meet people and to do things more often. And I'm just having less work meetings and I'm doing less commute. So I personally have had a word with myself and this week I'm beginning to do some of those things that I've mentioned. It's always that easy thing. It's like the cobblest children's shoes.
00:32:14
Speaker
You know, you're kind of familiar with it. You've read all about it. You've done the, you know, you engage with the academic studies and then and then before you know it, you've slipped out of the habit yourself. So I was going to ask how it's impacted your own running because you've got to be the advocate of it. Obviously, it's your campaign. Have you run to meet somebody you wouldn't normally run to meet?
00:32:43
Speaker
Because this is about icing. You mentioned showers before. If I run a mile and mile and a half to go and meet somebody, I'll be sweating. I'll be quite self mindful of that. Has anyone commented or said anything? What have you come up against in my life? So I would guess to your first question, which is like, how does this affect my room? I would say probably I'd be interested in you and UK run chat as well, which is,
00:33:09
Speaker
you when you're doing a campaign type thing or you're doing something like you go, you can find yourself being drawn into the kind of social media campaigning and engaging with a community side of things. And you can begin to do the expense of actually doing the active stuff yourself. So that's, that's definitely something I'm mindful of. And I'm kind of
00:33:29
Speaker
you almost try to do it in kind of windows of time rather than let it just infill other times, which then allows me to go for the run. In terms of the shower stuff, I mean, I think we probably have spoken about this before, but when the very first thing I did when thinking, well, having met you actually, and some other people who I found really inspiring at the National Running Show,
00:33:55
Speaker
I basically thought, well, I'll do what I would have done professionally, but I'll do it around running and try and find out what some of the barriers are to why people don't run everyday journeys. And this is going back, you know, something like three years ago, I still.
00:34:11
Speaker
Still working full time at that time for the castle and then it was basically so what is the biggest barrier and basically among cyclists and runners people said well actually it is this lack of you know moved office we've only got one shower and there's a hundred of us or move move place of work and i you know there's no no facilities and i've i used to do it but i can't do anymore.
00:34:30
Speaker
So that's when we set up something called Run Friendly, which has evolved into something now called Active Things. And it's basically, it is this pass which via an app allows you to grab a shower and get changed in gyms, hotels, retailers like Decathlon, you know, all sorts of different places. So you can then do that and then get on with the rest of your day.
00:34:53
Speaker
Equally, it's for if people are playing football outside or, you know, whatever it might be, you know, doing other outdoor things, you can it's a place where you can grab a shower and then move on with the day. Now, I should say right now, given the guidance from government, it is a service which we've temporarily paused because many of those venues have closed. But it's definitely I guess this isn't a kind of approach to kind of innovation, which I really believe is important. It's like all of your answers and all of the things you should really do
00:35:21
Speaker
come from speaking to people and asking them questions and understanding what the barriers are and then trying to think, okay, well, how could we begin to meet some of those barriers in novel ways and just to make it as easy as possible for people to do the active choice rather than the passive or inactive one?
00:35:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's really good. So you don't have access to gym showers, et cetera. Yeah, we do. However, next door at the gym and they have kind of thing. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. So people like, you know, some of the bigger brands like Nike were using it for, for also for things like race days. So, you know, so they would buy it on behalf of
00:36:07
Speaker
you know, a number of competition winners, for example. And so on the day of the London Marathon or whatever it might be, you know, they're giving people an extra special experience whereby
00:36:20
Speaker
free race, post race, whatever you want, you know, family, whatever it might be, who've come to support you and it's, you know, it's pouring down my rain, they can use the app to basically just, you know, go and grab a shower, freshen up and, you know, sit there with a medal on or, you know, sit there with a family and enjoy the rest of the day in a, you know, in a place like London or, you know, wherever the race may be held. So it's kind of both for preparing to, you know, a new everyday use, but also perhaps on race days as well.
00:36:51
Speaker
When you, thank you for mentioning me as inspiring. That's very nice of you, Scott. I'll just acknowledge that. Thank you, mate. In truth, you know, you have to, you know, also you remember these things as well, don't you? So I remember you were setting up the stand at that time and I sort of bumbled across and we had a chat and then I think we ended up, I mean, I probably delayed you setting up the stand actually, but yeah, definitely made its mark anyway.
00:37:18
Speaker
I didn't know how to set it up between the last few months. I spent hours trying to work it out. Where physically, I'm sure you've seen lots of this in your role with Innovate UK then.
Active Travel Inspiration from Europe
00:37:36
Speaker
Where is there, or is there anywhere in the UK that's set up how you'd want it to be for active travel? Or is there somewhere else in a different country that does this really well? I mean, I think of Holland and cycling, for example. Is that a blueprint? Is there somewhere good in the UK that you look at and go, wow, this is great. This town, this city is really set up well.
00:38:02
Speaker
So yeah, so I think there are almost like parts of places that you would go, right, okay, that works really well. And we can borrow a bit from that and try and share that so that it can also be done at other places. But I guess the simple answer is in places like the Netherlands, and if you think about that being a very cycle-friendly place, very bike-friendly place,
00:38:30
Speaker
If you look at the history of it, it's really interesting. So basically, those of us old enough, cast your mind back to 1972, there was an oil crisis.
00:38:40
Speaker
and basically meant that oil around the world became very much more expensive and so driving a car became very much more expensive and in not just not just in the Netherlands but in the UK and America and other places there was at that time a big boom in cycling so which had been very much bigger back in the kind of 1940s and 50s but then the 60s came along people
00:39:06
Speaker
being able to own a car became part of an affordable thing for a greater number of people. And then we began to radically redesign towns and cities and places. And a couple of places in the world, in particular Denmark and places like Copenhagen or the Netherlands and places like Amsterdam and Utrecht.
00:39:27
Speaker
They said, well, actually, a combination of the oil crisis and actually having towns and cities and places which are not really very suitable for cars. Why don't we pull back from becoming a car centric place and instead become a much more people friendly or bike friendly place?
00:39:46
Speaker
And so, it's actually taken, you know, since that time, the early 70s for places like Copenhagen to put in the infrastructure to put in traffic calming so that people when they are on their bikes don't feel quite as a threatened.
00:40:01
Speaker
and likewise with the Netherlands, it's taken, it almost took around that time in the early 70s, it took essentially a series of quite high profile instances where children had been killed by cars, or I should say
00:40:19
Speaker
killed by people driving cars because it's not abstracted and people just said you know enough's enough and they they began to deliberately and very intentionally do something about it but it's taken you know since you know let's say 50 years so you can look at many of the things that they've done well and say okay how can we borrow those but I think
00:40:43
Speaker
When it comes to running, the point is, what do you need? So let's pick places like, you know, stay with Shropshire or stay with, you know, a city.
00:40:53
Speaker
if you're building homes like a new development of homes what you might find is that that development might you might have brilliant pavements and you might have good park and so forth for that particular kind of let's say it's 500 homes but actually the road that takes those 500 roads to say somewhere like Shrewsbury what you'll often find is
00:41:17
Speaker
there's no protect, you know, there'll be sections of that road, there won't be protected pavements. So even if you were inclined, as a, you know, say as a parent to like walk that with your kids, there'll be sections of it you make you think that's too dangerous, I'm not going to do so. So having unbroken protected kind of pavement space between places is essential. Things like
00:41:39
Speaker
You know, we all have probably done it, you know, you know, we have a camper van. I don't drive it in London because you have to impart because there's good policies, which means it's too expensive to do so. But, you know, if if you if you're in London, you often see pavements and other places which people have parked on.
00:41:58
Speaker
So the act of parking on pavement is something that's just natural and we all do it. But actually, if you think about, well, what does that stop people being able to do? So it means if you're running or walking or in a wheelchair or pushing a buggy or whatever it might be, it often means that you have to then go back onto the road, round the car and then back onto the pavement again.
00:42:19
Speaker
So there's things like as runners we can all do which is like stop parking on pavements like find a place to park your car which doesn't block a pavement is would be a really socially positive thing to do and if you're thinking about you know run friendly places or places which are good for runners it would be you would always have enough protected you know pavements to allow for people to move safely without you know necessarily having to go on the roads but it also means that's brilliant for kids it's you know it's brilliant for those other kind of uses of places.
00:42:49
Speaker
Then there's other things like parks and they call them linear parks. But if you take somewhere like Paris, Paris is doing amazing stuff around active travel at the moment. They have an amazing mayor called Anne Hildago and a brilliant kind of academic at the Sorbonne called Carlos Moreno. And what they're doing is they have this brilliant idea called the 15 minute city, which in some ways is quite simple. It's almost like a vision for the future. But the idea is that you should be able to get
00:43:18
Speaker
80% of the amenities that you need in your day-to-day life. So go to chemists, be able to see the doctor, your kids get to school, be able to get groceries, whatever it might be. You should be able to do that within a 15 minute walk, run, or bike ride from where you live.
00:43:36
Speaker
And the idea of that isn't something you can just switch over and make it happen overnight. But people like Sport England, they had a new strategy that came out yesterday, and I was really interested in listening to that. That's an idea that they're really doing something about. So there's something called the Town and Country Planning TCPI, I think it's called. And they're working on that idea, which is how can we
00:44:01
Speaker
design and plan places, existing places, and design services to allow those things to become possible again. And, you know, that thing about this that used to be the thing in America used to call it the Popsicle test.
00:44:15
Speaker
But the idea that you should be able to go from your house, walk to a nearby shop as a kid, you know, eight, nine, whatever, whatever we used to be able to do or think was possible, and then walk home with your popsicle before it melted. So their idea was like, it would be something like, you know, just under a mile, say. So the ideas aren't new. They're just being repackaged to kind of help us think about how we can make places better for people to
00:44:45
Speaker
make active journeys, live active outdoor lives, more easy and more and more by default than, as you say, the instinct of just picking up your car keys and jumping in the car. And basically, it's a whole series of those very small things you add together as to run some campaign.
00:45:02
Speaker
we're advocating to say let's have more of these let's get behind campaigns like Living Streets which is a walking campaign let's get behind things like Sustrans which is a sustainable transport campaign which does loads for you know they have a cycle network which they maintain throughout the UK and they do an amazing job it's used every I was talking to them the other day that it's used
00:45:25
Speaker
by runners every bit as much as it's being used by cyclists, but it's called the National Cycling Network. If runners felt, and it was an infrastructure that was set aside for them, it wouldn't just be the ones that know about it being used, it'd be very many more again. And I think these sort of things about bringing them to people's attention and saying, you've got permission, you're invited runners to use this stuff to not just go for your,
00:45:53
Speaker
you know your 5k rotten but actually forgetting places and there's just one other thing there's some an amazing new thing called slow ways which by this gorilla geographer he calls himself called Daniel Raven Ellison and basically slow ways is is like re-finding the paths and the tracks
Reviving Historical Paths: Slow Ways Initiative
00:46:12
Speaker
that for hundreds of years were how we would walk or run or, you know, get between places. They're re-finding them and reopening and putting them, you know, mapping them again and wanting to make those open to runners and pedestrians. So, you know, how do you get between Blackburn and Burnley? Well, at the moment, people would drive. But actually, there are walkways, you know, paths that you can re...
00:46:39
Speaker
kindle in order to make that a perfectly viable thing to do and it's about you know all of these things about bringing them to people's attention and then saying look on us we it's not just about how we do our parkrun on a Saturday as amazing as that is it's about how do you get to parkrun and it's about how do you you know if you go to the gym how do you get to the gym and it's about you know if you're going to go you know see a friend could you you know could you run there
00:47:06
Speaker
meet them in the pub out of the pipe, you know, get back in a different way. You know, so it's about how we live the rest of our lives as well as kind of having a clear boundary around our running life, if you will. Yeah.
Running Mayors Network: Promoting Community Running
00:47:18
Speaker
So tell us about the running mares and what will they be doing and how they fit in?
00:47:26
Speaker
Well, again, cards on table, Joe, I am hoping that, you know, there is a certain potential running mayor of Shrewsbury. But having looked at the, this morning at the people who've applied, I didn't see one for Shrewsbury, Joe. I know you're a very busy man, but. So yeah, so running mayors. So I should say it's a champion for running
00:47:55
Speaker
where they live. So it's somebody who can champion running as everyday journeys, but also running for sport and for leisure, which essentially we think, you know, running is a gift that keeps on giving. The more indifferent people see it as a possible thing for them, the better it is for both that individual, but also it is for everyone else and for that place. And so a running there basically is like,
00:48:22
Speaker
a visible face, a visible name, a visible voice, if you can have a visible voice, an audible voice, who basically champions running. And we have borrowed the idea or taken inspiration from, whichever you will, from the equivalent for cycling. And a brilliant charity based out in the Netherlands called Bikes, B-Y-C-S, does something called the Cycling Mares Network.
00:48:50
Speaker
and we're setting up an equivalent which is called the Running Mayors Network. So we're looking for people to come forward and become the running mayor of where they live and that might be a village, it might be a town or it might be a city and you know we've got some fantastic supporters, we've got people like Lee Craigie who's the active nation commissioner who's like formerly you know by the Scottish Government is kind of
00:49:16
Speaker
championing and supporting creating Scotland as a place for people to actively travel more than they've got behind it. Will Norman, who's the commissioner for cycling and walking in London, he's got behind it. People like amazing Joe Pavey, the five-time Olympian. We've got some fantastic supporters. And we're really just saying, okay, well,
00:49:42
Speaker
who's up for it? And what we'll do is we don't have all the answers by no means, but basically we'll end up with a network of people who can both inspire and support each other, but they can also put different skills to bear. So who's great at social media? Can they share those tips with others? Who's brilliant at dealing with
00:49:59
Speaker
journalists who knows how to be interviewed well, who's academics who can provide some research insights that can be helpful to people, who knows how to go into a school and talk to primary school kids about how they can persuade their parents to turn the school run into the school run, whatever it might be. So we're looking for people to come forward and the first cohort of those running mayors
00:50:26
Speaker
closes on the 31st of January and we'll do a second cohort later, but we'd very much like people to apply before the 31st of January.
00:50:35
Speaker
Okay. So finally, where do people do that and how do people interact with you?
Getting Involved with Run Some & Running Mayors
00:50:42
Speaker
Scott, you saw your social handles and all that. Oh yeah, brilliant. So it's basically www.runsum.org. So that's R-U-N-S-O-M-E.org. And there's right there, there's a section on running mares and
00:51:00
Speaker
The running mayor section basically takes you just to a form, very simple form, takes less than five minutes to do, and it basically asks you, why do you want to be a running mayor? Where do you want to be a running mayor for? What's the top three things that you'd like to do or make happen as a running mayor in the following 12 months? And then it says, just gives an example of, it can be very low key, it can be with your school or
00:51:28
Speaker
parents group or local running group, whatever it might be, an example of something where you've engaged others, because we think that's kind of important. These people will need to work with others, they'll need to listen to people, they'll need to kind of engage with people who aren't 100% like them. So that's the only other thing that we really ask people to do. And then the social channels are
00:51:51
Speaker
at RunSomeHQ on Instagram and Twitter. So R-U-N-S-O-M-E-H-Q. So like headquarters abbreviated for both of those. And yeah, we'd love the UK Run Chat and Sport Chat community to get involved and we see them as a really valuable community and who instinctively are supportive of one another and offer ideas. And it's a brilliant fit, we think.
Looking Ahead: Future Plans & Progress
00:52:21
Speaker
Cool, Scott, thanks very much. I'd love to do this again in six, 12 months time so you can see where you're at. It'll be really interesting to see how, I mean, hopefully we'll be in a vaccinated post COVID place and to see how run-friendly and how many people there.
00:52:43
Speaker
commuting, et cetera. It'd be great to do that again if you're up for it. Yeah, definitely. And I think probably, personally, definitely up for it. And I think it would be amazing if we could get some of the local running mayors to also come and have a conversation about some of the things that they've been up to as well. So that would be fantastic. And that would be a pleasure and an honor as always, Joe. Thank you, Scott. Thanks for coming on. It's been great. Thanks, mate. Thanks, everyone.