Canterbury Half Marathon

Mike Gratton 2

I have kept out of the caterbury Half debate but concur with the statements made about the costs of the event.

When the Pilgrims Hospice were the owners the event came with a lot of charity good will and costs of policing and marshalling were by and large given free.

In the last few years these costs have had to be passed on as some aspects, such as road closurers are now outsourced by the council and there is a cost associated with implementing the traffic management plan.

On viewing the mounting ongoing costs I think it is unlikely that a commercial company like ourselves or RTS can make a go of it based on the number limitations of the current route.

It is a lovely route and I ran the old 1980's version of it many times, but times have changed and risk assessments in conjunction with Kent Police indicate that it can not be increased by much without endangering runners as movement of ambulances and support vehicles is already very difficult on the narrow lanes.

The answer is either a leap of faith and we plan for a city centre based event with 4 or 5000 runners, which we have looked at but can't come up with a route that allows for sensible traffic management without closing Canterbury down completly for the morning, The council would let us do it if we could show that we could manage the roads.

Or a local running club or voluntary organisation with lower overheads for marshals etc in Canterbury take it over - I'd be happy to hand over any information to such a body if someone came forward.

As RTS state, it was not cancelled lightly - it was an event we were proud to have built up from 450 runners to 1000 runners over 2 years but have to admit that the result was changing the dynamic of the race from a charity fund raiser to a club race, which was no good for Pilgrims Hospice. 

I can be contacted on mike@209events.com or 01252 373797 if anyone wants to discuss taking over the event.