Committee statement: 2021 league cancelled

At the League committee meeting on 18 January, the committee took the decision, with regret, to not go ahead with the league in 2021. This was a unanimous decision of the clubs in the league.

The races in the league require quite a long planning process, including submitting detailed proposals to local authorities, highways etc and at this stage it is not known what the requirements for events in the summer will be. If, as is highly likely, Covid secure requirements are still in place the league races and venues make it very difficult to comply – phased starts, social distancing, no car sharing etc. Also, we need to be very mindful of the feelings of local communities. The bodies we need to agree our plans with are for the most part not considering proposals at the moment meaning we can’t proceed in any event.

The league is holding entry fees for several hundred runners, rolled over from 2020. We intend to carry these forward to 2022. These will guarantee a place in that series, and guarantee the price (£20).  In due course we will publish a list of entries being held. Anyone who wants a refund can receive one.

The committee is meeting again in April to investigate if there is any possibility of running some kind of event, and we will advise if this becomes possible.

The committee members, who are all club representatives and league participants, are very disappointed to have had to come to this decision and we are sure that our club members will be as well. Unfortunately the more you look into it, the more apparent it becomes that it is simply not feasible to have a league this year, and the organising clubs had come to similar conclusions before our meeting.

We are planning on starting the league next year on 26 April 2022.