Yahoo Finance Over a quarter of current runners started during the pandemic
A poll by athletic shoe review company RunRepeat has shown a snapshot of what we already knew - that the pandemic has led to a large rise in people taking up running for the first time, with over a quarter of those surveyed saying they were new to the sport.
The survey of 3, 961 runners revealed that 28.76% of them runners surveyed began running over the course of the last 14 months. RunRepeat, which did not say which countries the survey sample was taken from, says it wanted to understand what was motivating new runners and whether they intended to participate in races, compared to those who were already running before Covid.
There were some interesting further snippets in among the data. For example: when it comes to racing, only half (50.4%) of new runners planned to take part in a race over the next 12 months. The proportion of pre-pandemic runners who planned to do so is much higher, at 63.8%.
Of the newbies who did intend to take part in a race, only 68.42% plan to do so in-person, compared to 85.34% of those who were running before the pandemic. Around a third (31.58%) of new runners were looking to turn to virtual races instead, more than twice the proportion of pre-pandemic runners who intended to do so.
Motivations for running differed between the two groups as well – the vast majority (72.78%) of those who picked up running during the pandemic cited physical health as one of the primary motivations for doing so, compared to 61.66% of pre-pandemic runners.
While 64% of pre-pandemic runners said mental health was one of the primary reasons they ran, only 54.52% of new runners said the same. Meanwhile a similar proportion of both pre-pandemic and new runners pointed to confidence and self-esteem as a motivation, at 32.49% and 31.52% respectively.
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