The research was commissioned for RunTogether, an initiative that provides access to 700 local running groups, with the aim of getting a million people into athletics and running by 2020. So yes, England Athletics have a clear (if noble) motive for releasing these findings.

But they also reflect the reality of life for many women. When some 64% of British women have experienced sexual harassment in public places, and 35% have experienced unwanted sexual touching (figures that rise to 85% and 45% respectively for women aged 18-24), it’s hardly surprising that we’re anxious about getting out and about on our own.

I’m not much of an exerciser, largely because I’m afflicted with a syndrome I like to call chronic laziness. But I did have a brief fling with jogging when I was in my final year of university (I particularly liked to run when I should have been working on my dissertation), and I remember vividly the anxiety I often felt as a woman exercising on my own in a public space. It would hit me suddenly, like a splash of cold water to the face, and jolt me out of the semi-trance induced by the rhythm of my feet hitting the ground.

I remember them all: the teenage boys in the kids’ playground in the park who jeered as I ran past, repeating “don’t make eye contact” in my head like a mantra. The blokes who yelled at me from car windows. The men who thought it was funny to jump suddenly into my path, startling me, and the guys who grabbed or slapped or pinched my body as I passed them on the pavement. I’ve never felt more self-conscious, more like a piece of public property, than I did when exercising in public.

“Women are scared to run alone, but running groups are not the answer”