Following on from yesterday’s update, England Athletics have issued a statement today, including the following advice:
England Athletics advises that all face-to-face activity such as club training sessions, events, competitions, club committee and face-to-face meetings, athlete camps, running groups and social events should be suspended until at least the end of April.
On that basis, we will be suspending all club training sessions until the end of April. In addition, we will not be using our social media channels to organise group runs.
As this advice is at odds with the usual suggestion to consider running in groups for safety, if you decide to keep running on your own, please take care. Ideally, make sure somebody knows where you are going. If you run with a mobile phone, consider if it’s worth using a live location sharing app, such as WhatsApp’s live location feature (https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/26000049/).
Outside of a club setting, it is obviously up to each individual how they follow the government and EA guidance, but if anybody feels unsafe running alone and decides to run with others, we would encourage you to run in the smallest group possible and be mindful of the Public Health England social distancing measures referred to in the England Athletics statement.