Leicestershire Heart Safe Runners

Following a meeting with the charity Heartsafe who have already begun working with parkrun on a national basis, the Leicestershire Running and Athletics Network have agreed to team up and lead on a new project “LEICESTERSHIRE HEARTSAFE RUNNERS” where club runners can learn how to perform CPR in the event of an emergency and also learn the basic skills needed to operate a defibrillator.

At a recent event, where a runner suffered a cardiac arrest, a fellow runner, who was a cardiologist,  was able to start immediate CPR to save his life.

This incident brought sharply into focus the need for the running community to be better prepared for this eventuality and how to deal with it. How would we feel if a club mate was to suffer an attack either at a race or on a training night and we didn’t have the skills to at least try and save him or her?
 

Over the next few months, the Leicestershire Network will be working with Heartsafe to host training at every club in the county and recruiting “ambassadors” in each one of those clubs who will ensure that training is further spread by conducting training in the club environment and hopefully to other clubs as well.