Last Saturday evening, a crowd of more than 2,000 congregated at Punggol Safra for Singapore’s only integrated race where participants ran alongside visually, intellectually, physically, hearing and mental health challenged runners and walkers.

Event was organised by Runninghour 

They were all taking part in the fifth edition of Run For Inclusion 2019, which is organised by Runninghour, and the 2019 event stretched along a wheelchair-friendly race route at the Punggol Waterway Zone with a record of 638 Persons With Special Needs attending the 2019 event.

Runninghour aims to provide an avenue for mildly-challenged youths to participate in sports and integrate with mainstream society. In 2012, the club expanded to include visually challenged runners and besides organising yearly running events, the club, which registered as a co-operative in 2014, also holds regular sports activities such as Weekday Fun and Fitness sessions, weekly Saturday runs, tandem biking and dragon boating, amongst others.

Said John See Toh, Co-Founder of Runninghour, “Integration for the Persons With Special Needs community has always been Runninghour’s goal since we came together 10 years ago. We also believe that fitness is something for everybody regardless of ability. It is heartening to see more people join our run and we hope that this number continues to grow in the years to come, as we educate more people about what inclusivity is truly about.”

Complimentary slots given to Persons With Special Needs

As with the previous year’s runs, Run For Inclusion 2019 continued to offer complimentary slots for Persons With Special Needs and their caregivers to encourage them to join the run and promote an active lifestyle among the community. This year, 1,000 complimentary slots were extended to special needs participants and caregivers, limited to one caregiver per Person With Special Needs, up from 700 in 2018.

New 20km Cycling Challenge Category 

The 2019 event also featured the debut of a new category, the 20km cycling challenge where participants cycled alongside Persons With Special Needs on single bicycles and together with them on tandem bicycles. This category had aimed to showcase more activities suitable for special needs participants.

Return of Empathy Run category

As well, the popular Empathy Run segment was back, and this was where the participants took on challenges to experience the everyday difficulties faced by Persons With Special Needs, including Runninghour’s signature Blindfold Run where participants ran in pairs, with one of them guiding the other along while he or she runs blindfolded.

And the other categories in the event had featured a 10km Run, 5km Walk/Run, 3km Walk/Run as well as a personalised distance Run, where participants in this category could run or walk any distance they wanted, to a maximum of 3km.

Post-Run Performances 

The event concluded with Runninghour guides and Persons With Special Needs putting together performances to entertain participants. This also included performances by groups of students from Delta Senior School and Metta School.

All photos are credited to Runninghour.