2020 being what it is we’ve been exposed to little or no racing. Despite this we’ve been incredibly proud of our athletes and they way they’ve reframed, refocused and got on with the task of remembering how we actually enjoy this running thing. Literally walking the talk of ‘love the journey’ and keeping running at the forefront of a routine that helped maintain physical and mental wellness in a challenging year. In the meantime, we witnessed the ticking off of little progress goals along the way. Still, it’s important for driven folk like runners to have a method of marking progress. So, we set many of our athletes time trials (solo race like efforts) in their training plans. These type of efforts can serve different purposes depending on the athlete. It might serve as a milestone 1 mile or 5km achievement in a beginner runner or as a marker in the sand to evaluate progress pre and post training cycle in the more experienced runners. For other athletes, it served as an important point of interest in the sometimes ground hog day-ness of lockdown. We also learned that the time trial served as a remarkable exposer of self doubt. Allowing us to use this time away from the spotlight of races to work on identifying negative thought loops, improving self talk, focus and mental resilience. We think many of our athletes are coming out of 2020 calmer and with a greater personal armory against self defeat (and who doesn’t need that!). We absolutely loved witnessing these amazing individuals getting out there running hard, alone - being inspirational in often completely un inspirational surroundings. Many of them were even setting personal records so we decided to provide a virtual event series so these efforts could be recorded and so that we could add an element of community to the mix - albeit a virtual one. Below we’ll record the results of the events.

Before we do, we’d like to highlight that everyone is an amazing, inspiring warrior and no one is more of less valuable according to the time they ran. If your name is on the list you are awesome. End of story. Oh and also there was no leveler for comparison. Below you will see athletes of all genders, ages, training phases, terrains and gradients. The only real common factor is that each effort is powered by foot and spirit.

If your name isn’t on the list, please do join us for the next one. Everyone is welcome.

Big love, Rach and Tom xx

(image: Lebo Diseko)

RNE Virtual 5km 12 December 2012

Christian Van Oostrum 00:16:22

Thomas Payn 00:17:16

Ciaran McAneny 00:18:36

Steve Howliston. 00:19:01

Andy Jordan. 00:19:14

Rhian Emanuel 00:19:24

Tom McGrath. 00:20:21

Thomas Lesnier. 00:20:34

James Davis 00:20:40

Justin Warhurst 00:21:20

Antony Stagg 00:22:02

Pierpaolo Avanzi 00:22:38

Francesca Rossi 00:23:14

Andrew Stringer 00:23:40

Daniel Maskit 00:25:08

Ricky Berghold 00:26:20

Lebo Diseko 00:27:16

Efe Avan-Nomayo 00:28:56

Omar Alothman 00:32:14

Hiba Almansour. 00:36:52

Solo efforts. (Why we introduced time trials, what we saw & virtual race results)