I’m afraid we have some bad news, we have had to cancel tomorrows event. The rain continued to pour all day yesterday and late into the night. I’m sure that those who live locally would have seen this out their windows that the weather hasn’t been kind to us (for those who don’t, HERE is a local news article), we couldn’t foresee the intensity of the rain and how it would impact the fields. Please read on for more information.
We have arrived at the venue today after leaving it with a few hours of sunshine to see if that would help and unfortunately it has not. We have attempted to fit tracking on the entrance to the car park and in the really heavy areas but even with that in place the vast majority of the field isn’t fit for cars. We have attached some images of small parts of the field HERE & HERE & HERE. It would be a risk to take this on.
We activated our contingency plans yesterday which involves a park and ride from a car park that has a few hundred spaces about 5 miles from the venue. We booked coaches for this too. However even this plan means we would have to park 4x4s on the field as that car park doesn’t have the capacity to hold all the vehicles, and after our final checks today we are not confident that this would work, especially with the early morning forecast for Saturday. Arley Hall is very remote and therefore there are not a lot of towns nearby with local parking facilities we can use.
Starting and finishing at Arley with its grass parking is something which we have to contend with at every event to bring you one of the most consistently fast road closed courses in the UK. As we mentioned in our email yesterday we have done this event 12 times in 6 years, we do not take decisions like this lightly. The event is sold out, we could not take any more entrants for it and had a strong elite field in place. We have already incurred a considerable expense as you will of noticed we have posted out race packs to the vast majority you, we have bought medals/t-shirts/perishable snacks like bananas and flapjacks, we have road closures in place approved from the council and we have everything sitting in our vans ready to set up today.
We are very sorry if this has affected your training and affected your weekend plans but we feel we have to cancel the event tomorrow as we can not guarantee everyone will be able to get into the venue. We do this with a heavy heart.
We have a form giving you some options for your entry, we organise other races nearby, many of which use hard standing car parking that won’t be affected by the winter rain. Some have a slightly higher entry fee than you paid for this event, however this doesn’t matter, your entry will be transferred regardless of cost.
We also do the Cheshire 10k twice a year in March and November and the next event is in March, we have done this event 12 times in 6 years so the chances of this car park issue happening again in quick succession are unlikely so passing your entry over to March is also an option on the form. We kindly request that if you could fill this form out by midnight November 15th 2019 so we can make the appropriate arrangements.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FORM
Given the unprecedented rain in the last 48 hours we hope that the alternative options will make up for this disappointing news. However, if these options do not work for you, get in touch via email for a refund.
Thank you for reading and again our sincere apologies.
The Cheshire 10k team