After Kate Giles, CEO of endurance sports clothing company Crewroom, stopped competitive rowing, it left a void. This is how running has helped her overcome that empty feeling.


We all have our reasons for taking up running. A relatively small number of people running past their 30s have done so all their lives and, most often, something in our lives has triggered us to take up running.

Two common reasons are to lose weight or to give up smoking, others start running to get fitter and there are some that start to run after losing a loved one, both as a tribute – many start running for a charity – and as a celebration of life.

Picture: Kate Giles puts The Running Bug's Dan Foley through his paces in Crewroom kit.

For Kate Giles, running replaced the gap that was left when she had given up rowing competitively: “I stopped training and my weight ballooned by three stone. I couldn’t think about training if I didn’t have someone there pushing me and telling me to train. I didn’t want to do anything.”

This is a problem that you can find throughout the sporting world. The endorphins you get from training and competing provide huge highs, which are very hard to replace once you stop..

Some people are affected worse than others, leading to depression and, in the worst cases, suicide.

For Kate, running was part of the solution to fill this void and it was something that she could get up and do either at her own pace or socially. She also found a positive focus in founding her company, Crewroom, which is where she puts so much of her energy these days.


Silver Lining


The principles behind Crewroom were also born out of adversity. On an otherwise normal training day in May 1996, Kate went out on the Thames in her boat. It was a sunny but cool day and, about an hour into her row, there was a heavy Spring shower.


Wearing standard layers of cotton rowing kit, Kate was drenched and, out of the sun and with the wind blowing, quickly lost body heat. When she eventually got back to the boat house, she couldn’t warm up in the shower. She fast developed a cough and, two days later, was hospitalised. She had pneumonia and suffered a long recovery, which included coughing so hard that she fractured her own ribs.


By her own admission, she pushed to get back into her boat too early, before even her rib had healed, and the recovery process took more than five months. Kate’s aim of representing Great Britain at the Olympics didn’t happen, and she started a business distributing clothes for a US company to the GB rowing team.


Thanks to her connections within the sporting world, she gained the confidence to start developing her own range of retail products, which has grown into the brand Crewroom, now in its twelfth year of training and counting Team GB’s rowing team amongst its clients.


The success of the business has been built on the experience from that day in May 1996. Determined to make clothing for endurance athletes of all abilities, Kate wanted to design a product that would provide protection against the elements as well as providing comfort.


The second generation of Crewroom’s clothing range is made from a unique material called Vapour-X which uses carbonised bamboo; the same product that shoe odour eaters are made from. Kate developed the unique fabric when she was asked to make an eco-friendly shirt for Royal Parks.


“Cotton requires a lot of water to grow and a lot of resource to harvest. We were working with bamboo and cotton but neither dry out particularly well. I heard about carbonised bamboo and not many people were using it. It’s great at fighting bad odours and is also thermo-regulating so is perfect for endurance athletes.”


The company has just received its first run of its third generation gear, which uses an enhanced carbonised bamboo blended with hollow channel polyester. According to Kate, this gives it incredible wicking properties, taking sweat away from the body so quickly and efficiently that you can actually see beads of perspiration gathering on the outer layer of the product.


Kate’s dedication to endurance athletics and her determination that participants should never suffer what she went through have been the driving force behind this great company.


She also sees running as something more than just a way of competing or getting fit. Recently, she started a running group in London’s Richmond Park. Unlike some running clubs, the philosophy is that this is a way for people to meet and support each other. If someone wants to do some hill training, there is someone who can train you. If you want a gentle run, a group of you can head out at your leisure. If you’re injured, other members will be there to grab a cuppa and slice of cake. It’s all about community, something that we at the Running BUg know all about.