In this episode I speak to Mel Bound. This is the second time we’ve had Mel on the podcast, and there’s a very good reason for that. In recent weeks, we’ve launched the We Will campaign. We have been appalled at what feels like a recent rise in the harassment and heckling of women runners, and we got together to talk about that. And once we started talking about it, we realised that this wasn't recent at all: this is every woman's lived experience - always. At Women’s Running we had sent out a survey in January, and one of the questions asked how safe women felt when they ran, and 69% of them didn’t feel safe. 69%. We asked them more questions about the experiences that made them not feel safe, and there was a catalogue of horrible things: heckling, shouting, body shaming, following, stalking, waiting, threatening, spitting, hitting, groping. No matter what the experience was, these women felt real danger and real fear. Crucially, for some of them, it stopped them from running altogether. So we want to do something about that, and part of what we’re doing is launching We Will, in which we’re asking for everyone – men and women – to pledge small changes that will have a combined bigger impact. We want women to tell their stories, we want to educate our young men, and we want to challenge the status quo, and we want to run without fear. I speak to Mel here about all of this, our own experiences, and how we’d like you to help.

Find out more about We Will, follow us on Instagram and please pledge what you’ll do to help women run without fear.

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Ep 33. Mel Bound, founder of the We Will campaign