2023 REVIEW OF THE YEAR
Circa 323 BC, The homeless Greek Philosopher and some would say founder of cynicism Diogenes said, ‘It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours’. As to whether he actually was a trail runner is open to debate, it’s probably unlikely if you take into account the plethora of harpies, manticores, cyclops and Chimera that were roaming the countryside at that time. Not only would the runners be at risk of being digested, the feed stations and the volunteers manning them would have had an severely hampered life expectancy.
Cut to 2023, a time of global strife and lingering Covid, but on the plus side considerably less dragons. We had 26 excursions for you to frolic about in this Calendar year, some were solid stalwarts which had been running since 2019, some were relatively new kids on the block only having their second outing, and one we decided to mix things up a bit and actually tell you how long it was this year. We had 2.5k’s, 5k’s, 10’s 20’s, 40kms, Half Marathons & Marathons right through to a 57 Miler on offer for you in 2023. One person’s fun run is someone else’s Ultra Marathon and we know that crossing those respective finish lines is as important for one as it is the other. We just want you to finish, and if you do kneel down and start praying to a random shrub then we just consider that an added bonus.
Once again the year had a bit of everything, lakes, forests, coast paths, early mornings, private estates, very early mornings, moors, trails, roads, grass and early mornings with a couple of late nights thrown in to keep you on your toes. Meteorologically we had nearly everything that Mother Earth could throw at us, but one item that kept appearing on the specials board this year was rain, not just normal rain, on more than one occasion I expected to see Kevin Costner sailing up to me with webbed feet. Wind was also on the agenda this year as I am sure most of you recall, one event in particular had runners leopard crawling along the coast path frantically trying to call their mum whilst feed station volunteers re-enacted a scene from Sharknado.
Many new course records were set, legends were born, several questionable costumes were spotted, and much entertainment was to be had monitoring the live feed to some of the gps tracking.
We did introduce something new in 2023, the start of the PGE Canicross Championship, running from September through until the end of May, 4 rounds completed and 4 rounds to go. This has resulted in some epic turn outs for this years Canicross events, including the Siblyback Santa Scamper which resembled a festive Crufts.
What can you expect in 2024? The complete 2024 race calendar will be up tomorrow, with one omission and two new additions, which we are very excited about! The first of which will be launched this Sunday. In January we also start the new PGE 5k & 10k Trail running championship, with championship points on offer for the top 10 male & female finishers in both distances at 10 stages throughout the year.
We have just posted a photo album here on our main page with some of the pics from all of our events this year
We would like to extend a huge heartfelt thank all of our suppliers, partners, staff, volunteers, supporters & runners who have helped us put on our events this year, we really couldn’t do it without you. Thank you for an eventful 2023 and we are very much looking forward to seeing you in 2024.
Dave & Nic x