It’s coming home!

Since the Prime Minister announced plans for his roadmap, and the phased lifting of restrictions, we have been working really hard to produce our own plans to safely return to activity. Those plans can now be announced and Blackburn Couch to 5K will return to activity on Monday 10th May 2021.

The published roadmap for England states that, “from 29 March, formally organised outdoor sports – for adults and under 18s – can restart and will not be subject to gathering limits, but should be compliant with guidance issued by national governing bodies.”

Whilst the date isn’t in line with when we can legally return to action, we think its a realistic date given that we are a mass participation group that will be meeting in an area that has had its challenges in relation to managing the Covid-19 virus.

Adjustments

In the first plan back, we will not be meeting on a Saturday morning as we have since 2013. This decision has not been made lightly, and the rationale is that the park will be heavily congested from June 5th when parkrun returns. We don’t want to add to that congestion and we’re confident that we can deliver our Couch to 5K initiative with a revised programme. All other plans are unaffected as it was only Couch to 5K that met on a Saturday.

We will continue to review this as we move forward through 2021.

To support the return to activity, a brand new website has been constructed. New features have been implemented to recruit and manage volunteers, register participants and a live self service check in to support the NHS test and trace service.

Risk assessments have been reviewed and updated and a new Covid-19 risk assessment is in place. All the volunteer team will be offered a full day’s training to support them in their role and to keep the activity as safe as possible.

What next?

Run Leaders, Walk Leaders and Volunteers: We will need a huge amount of help as we are expecting to be really busy – you can volunteer here. If you are thinking of coming back to the park, and you can help out, please sign up.

Participants: We need to have an idea as to how many people are coming along. Please make sure that you register for the programme in advance. You can register here right now or view our schedule.

Training: We are looking at dates for our Run Leader, Walk Leader and Volunteer Training Days. We’ll keep you updated via our newsletter.

Please bear with us and try to support our decisions in such unusual times. Our priority is to bring back the activity in a safe and well organised manner and there’s still a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done.