Her T-shirt slogan, ‘Don’t Harass Women,’ caught my attention outside Panteg House yesterday evening.
Mandy Robinson had just taken part in the ‘Own The Night’ run from the social club with around 55 other women and men. She explained why she backs this Welsh Athletics campaign to raise awareness of women’s safety whilst running.
Mandy, a member of Pont-y-pwl & District Runners– who organised the 3km and 6km social run, said: “As women, we should be able to come out and run whenever we want to, even when it’s dark.
“Me and, I guess, probably most of my female running friends have had the experience of being out running and feeling threatened, whether that’s being sworn at, beeped at, lewd comments made, or just feeling uncomfortable, so this is really important because it’s about us uniting together as women to say we’re gonna run together.
“We’re not going to not run in the night. We also want to educate men to say be careful what you say, don’t beep us in your car, you know, that’s not flattering.
“It’s really insulting and misogynistic and sexist, and we don’t like it. We feel threatened, so don’t do it, please.”
Mandy said it was “fabulous” to see a large turnout this evening and hopes it brings more women into running
She said: “There are people here I’ve never seen before, and that is just fabulous to see people running. It’s one of the reasons why I run, the kind of camaraderie of running and the friendships and things like that. It’s amazing. It’s such a good thing to do and it keeps us well and healthy mentally and physically, so the idea of that being taken away because we can’t run in the winter is appalling.”
‘Don’t harass women’ t-shitt
Mandy’s t-shirt was from Running Punks and can be bought online.