Why ‘All Paces Welcome’ Isn’t the Same as Inclusive

I once turned up at a friend’s house many years ago. I’d not long given birth to my first daughter and was feeling untethered, living in an unfamiliar military town and trying on this new identity of motherhood. With a full day ahead of me, I thought I’d pop round (we do this in Yorkshire, pop round uninvited) to the wife of someone my partner was playing golf with that day.

There were four husbands playing golf that day and I truly believed she’d be pleased to see me, that maybe she’d also like some company.

As she opened her front door I knew immediately I’d made a terrible mistake. I’ll never forget the feeling, that sharp, bodily recognition you can’t always name, the instinct that something isn’t right way, before any words can be formed. Suddenly, I felt as welcome as a death at a birthday party. I heard the chatter of the other wives in the background.

I realised I hadn’t been invited. I left quietly.

This week, Cosmopolitan published an investigation into harassment within UK run clubs, titled “The toxic side of running clubs: Harassment, clout and cover-up.” It’s a thought provoking read, potentially unsettling our comforting belief that being part of a run club community guarantees our physical and psychological safety.

The timing of the article feels significant. Because at the very same moment these unsettling stories are surfacing, the world of run clubs is booming. The running community has thrown its doors wide open, welcoming “everybody” with the promise of the “perfect hobby”, a combination of movement and belonging, connection, friendship and camaraderie.

Who wouldn’t want to join this? Everyone’s invited.

So as we eagerly clutch our party invitations to join in the celebrations of visionary community leaders who beckon us in with stories of hope, smashing old stereotypes of what a runner should look like to smithereens. Our social feeds filled with runners from historically marginalised communities, just like us, showing up and doing hard, joyful things, with a very clear message; Come and join us. All paces welcome. Inclusive club.

It feels a bit like a reckoning, a pivotal moment, and from the outside, it looks like progress. It is. And I love it.

But as the Cosmo investigation highlights, growth and goodness don’t cancel out complexity. What happens when problems arise that no one really wants to address? And why would anyone want to complicate something as simple as “just going for a run”?

What does progress look like from the inside?

What does it really take to keep running spaces safe, inclusive, and sustainable once that newbie, invitation clutched tightly in their sweaty palm, proof that they’re allowed in, comes knocking on the door?

Is sending out the invites enough to make a space inclusive? I’m not sure it is, I think (and know) that being inclusive is hard work. Much harder than a vibe, a personality or relying on well-meaning and often well meant intentions, and of reassuring words of never leaving anyone behind.

I honestly believe people are inherently good and full of visionary, inclusive intentions, I know I was. But once a running space has been created, human patterns begin to form and they’re hard to plan for. Longevity can turn into influence, proximity into status and informal conversations can all too often become decision-makers.

Even with ethos, good intentions and some box ticking systems, expectations of “everyone adapts to accommodate everyone” slowly gives way to social hierarchy and not through malice, something a lot simpler than that, through drift so gradual it feels normal. Until it doesn’t.

Allyship in running isn’t just about welcoming language or shared values. It’s about how power, pace and comfort are distributed once the doors are open. If inclusion only works while someone else is absorbing the emotional and practical cost, then it isn’t allyship, it’s delegation.

For some, the compromise of their progress to enable others to “fit in” is asking too much.

I sometimes think, once we’re through the door, safely in a space we never thought we’d belong in, it becomes harder to remember what it felt like to be on the outside.

I understand this, and I don’t think it’s as simple as forgetting where you came from. I think once you’ve stepped into the world of running, a complex and emotional performance relationship begins that is hard to untangle yourself from because the emotional cost is way too high.

Add in, too, is the additional layer of group dynamics, deeply human, that are sociological and psychological embedded in our history and culture, as we recognise how belonging can quickly turn into hierarchy. For me, I’ve never been able to finish Lord of the Flies, I have a visceral reaction to how quickly and how easily exclusion becomes justified.

There’s also this idea that adults should be able to self-manage their behaviour, but inclusive spaces don’t stay inclusive by accident. Somewhere along the way, responsibility for inclusion settles on the shoulders of the most attentive, the most emotionally literate, and usually the person quietly tracking who is missing and who feels marginal.

As I’ve been writing about for the last few weeks, dropping out of running isn’t a motivational failure. It’s often done so quietly that most people don’t notice. Tiny exclusions accumulate, small harms all add up as conversations shift, separate WhatsApp groups are formed, and uncomfortable realisation that you didn’t get the memo about a race entry, as you scroll through the Medal Monday images.

I’ve been on the inside, and I’ve witnessed and felt these subtle shifts, and I know that holding boundaries often leaves people disappointed. Managing safety, belonging, and progression all at once takes time, especially in a culture like running where identity and performance are so closely tied.

Decisions will inevitably land unevenly, values will clash and when growth outpaces clarity, tensions don’t just vanish in a puff of smoke, they settle into the spaces between people.

And when boundaries aren’t embedded in structure, disagreement doesn’t travel through process, it lands on a person.

In informal or unaffiliated clubs, that can mean there is no designated safeguarding lead, no written grievance pathway, and no external body to escalate concerns to. If something serious happens,harassment, coercion, abuse of influence, or repeated boundary crossing, there isn’t always a clear route for what happens next.

Without a shared process, problems are handled through relationships rather than structure. The person who feels uncomfortable has to weigh up what speaking out might cost them socially, friendships, group dynamics, or their place in the club. The burden of deciding what to do doesn’t sit with the club, it sits quietly with them.

Safeguarding is often dismissed as bureaucracy or box-ticking. No environment is 100% risk-free. But safeguarding is simply a structured framework. At its core, it’s just a clear answer to one question; if something goes wrong, what happens next? Who listens? Who decides? Who is accountable? Without those answers written down and shared, inclusion depends on trust alone and trust, however well-intentioned, is not a safeguarding framework.

If inclusion depends on a personality, proximity, or one person knowing every name and every absence, then this isn’t inclusion. It’s a fragile system waiting to splinter and fracture because what we’re learning fast in the world of sport, is that sustainable inclusion can’t be built on good intentions or welcoming slogans. For any space to be truly inclusive, it needs to be built with robust systems, shared responsibility, and transparent decision-making that recognise how power, pace and protection operate once the doors are open.

Because an open door is only the beginning.