CUPLESS RACING
This year the event will be CUPLESS! This means that we will NOT be providing disposable cups at water stations, volunteers will be happy to fill your own bottles/ cups. In our quest to reduce the waste produced by running events we ask you to respect this and run with your own drinking vessel.
USING HEADPHONES WHILST RUNNING
The use of personal stereos, iPods, phones or other music devises is not allowed under UKA rule 240 S5 – the wearing of headphones, or similar devices, (other than those medically prescribed), is not permitted in races on any single carriageway road that is not wholly closed to traffic.
FINISHERS T-SHIRTS
We have taken the decision to stop giving away free t-shirts at our large half marathon events to be proactive in lessening the environmental impact at our events.
We have already moved away from disposable plastic cups at drinks stations and bottled water at the finish line.
The type of technical t-shirts given away at running events (ours included) are for the most part very cheaply made products, using materials derived from oil based plastics, which are polluting to the environment during their manufacture, and every time they are washed distribute small amounts of microplastics into our water supplies.
Not only that, but we are well aware that those of you who take part in lots of races have drawers full of these types of t-shirts which may be worn once or twice but will soon be replaced by the newest giveaway item that is received.
With these factors in mind, we have chosen to offer a good quality, lower impact t-shirt to our runners as we do realise that some of you do love your race t-shirts and we wouldn’t want to take that away from you. Sadly, we are currently unable to offer these sustainable t-shirts as giveaways as production costs involved in making sustainable products is currently prohibitive, but we hope that given time the demand for sustainable products throughout the textile industry will mean that we’ll be able to review this.
To make up for the loss of the t-shirts we will be offering FREE OF CHARGE event photographs for every single runner, as well as a sustainable memento and of course a fantastic medal!
We hope that you will understand the reasoning behind our decision.