UK & East Midlands Urban League City Race event

A threatened tram strike, the licence for the event and permits for cars to bring equipment to Old Market Square granted only 3 days before the event, permission from the Nottingham City Council Tree and Lamp Post Department to place controls and a permit with a risk assessment from the Canal & River Trust to allow running along the tow path were just some of the stresses of organising a City Centre Race. If only the sport was better known and understood.

An entry of 224 with 209 finishers made it all worthwhile.

Images are all credit to Alan Barclay-Devine.

Our map-updater, who lives at the opposite end of the county, had to start from scratch with a new map-scale and lots of changes to the cityscape; our access/permissions officer found liaising with some of the ‘landowners’ was very time consuming in these WFH days and the event licence and ‘unloading in a pedestrian zone’ permits didn’t arrive until 3 days before the event. Huge thanks to Andrew Ridgway and Dave Cooke in these two roles – the sport needs a map and permission or there’s no event!

Our planner, ex-GB Sprint team member Dave Schorah and Controller, Jeff Baker were calm and got the job done despite quite a lot of ‘last-minute’ worries and on the day we were able to start people well before the official starting time of 10:30. I think people enjoyed their orienteering in Nottingham.

It can be a bit stressful being an event organiser but in NOC our Team Leaders ask for helpers so that helps me to concentrate on the main logistics of the event paperwork, equipment and setting up/clearing away. What a small but fantastic team they all were: 20 people in addition to the 3 main officials, of whom 14 were over 70 and everyone who wanted to have a ‘run’ did so and for free (NOC policy for our helpers at all our events).

NOC City Race event results and Routegadget