Having stopped their activities with the lockdown in March, Stamford Striders running club met again for the first time on Tuesday.

Following advice from UK Athletics (UKA), the club sessions are slightly different from how they have been in previous years, with runners now staying separated by 2m of fresh air.

The club has also gone from having a single start location for their runs to having different places and times for smaller groups to meet. The set routes that they follow avoid the town centre and instead make the most of countryside trails.

Nick Wells, chairman of the club, said: “We have taken a few weeks to implement the measures required by UKA.

“After a Zoom meeting with many of the other local clubs, we agreed that we could start running safely again, as a club, and have added a few extra ideas that seemed to make sense to us all to make our sport safer still.”

The club’s Covid co-ordinator, Robin Ball, said that he was very pleased with the way the first session back had gone.

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“Covid has focused a lot of people’s minds on improving their overall health and resilience by increasing their fitness and watching what they eat,” he said.

“Stamford Striders helps lots of people living in the Stamford area to lead a healthier life, and while we couldn’t hold our annual beginners’ course this year, because it was due to start in spring, we want people to know we are still active, and happy for new members to join us.”

Club members run for about an hour on Tuesday evenings and the four groups’ paces and distances range from a steady 5km with one group, to the fastest, which covers about eight miles.