Hi All,
Firstly, we hope this email reaches you in good health during these challenging times.
We are contacting you to let you know we’re going to run a Grindleford Virtual Fell Race next week. We’re really disappointed not to be able to run the real event this year, but it’s looked unlikely for some time now, it’s just taken a bit long for us to get a virtual event up and running instead. Spare time is such a hard thing to come by, in a seemingly odd manner at the moment.
Encouraging you all to come to Grindleford and run the real route was something we wanted to discourage from the off, everyone is rightly sensitive about encouraging numbers of people to any particular place at the moment. So instead we wanted to keep it local, your local. This means that anyone can run the race this year, wherever you are in the country, or for that matter, world.
If you want to take part, you need to match, as close as possible the 8km in length, taken in 260m of ascent and 2 river/stream crossings (of your own determination) and ensure it’s mostly (90%) run off road. So get creative, with the above guidance you can be free to interpret this in your own way, allowing people to run the race whether living in cities or rurally.
The race will run during next week, commencing 15th June 2020 and will include any entries that start after 00:00hrs on the 15th, and include any that finish after that, but before 23:59:59 on Sunday 21st 2020. We’re using SI Entries to allow us to collate any running times and provide a notional leader board throughout the week. We’ve also created a Strava Club which you can join, to allow you to see entries as they come in. Please complete the entry form on SI Entries and don’t forget to come back to enter your running time after you’ve completed your run so that we can pull together the leader board.
At the end of the day, we want this to be a fun thing, to bring together communities during the current situation, in a positive way. To this end, if you do participate, let us know. Share your photos of you doing your run with our Facebook page (or tag us) or use the hashtag #gvfr2020 on Instagram or Twitter and we’ll pull together all photos etc as the week goes on.
We’ve been running a virtual running club in the village over lockdown and for the last week they’ve been completing a Lands End to John O’Groats challenge to raise money for a few local charities and it’s the spirit of this that we’d like to achieve for the fell race this year. The kids have really celebrated the coming together for a shared cause and enjoying their running. You can read more about the kids challenge here: http://www.grindleford.com/grindleford-children-to-run-lands-end-to-john-ogroats-during-lockdown/
This time we’re asking for voluntary donations for the Grindleford Carnival Committee, from here we usually disperse any funds raised to other local causes in the area. This is a purely voluntary donation.
Look forward to seeing you all for a virtual race next week! Keep on running!
Enter here: https://www.sientries.co.uk/event.php?event_id=6834
Best wishes,
Grindleford Fell Race Team