I am pleased to say that Uckfield Runners will be taking over the Weald Challenge and the date for next years event will be 9 June 2024: please put that in your diaries.
We are very grateful to Stuart for allowing us to take over this event and looking forward to running the event ourselves.
We have been involved in this event since its inception 9 years ago providing the marshals each year and have always enjoyed being a part of this great event. Personally I have marshalled (at finish initially then as a sweeper on the Ultra) at every race and have organised the marshals for the last two years. A number of our members have also had the pleasure of running both the Ultra and the Half Marathon.
We will only be putting on the half marathon as numbers have been falling on the ultra run whilst last year the half marathon reached its cap and entries had to be closed. Also including the Ultra would involve a lot more work for Uckfield Runners to take on in the first year. However since we will only be running the half marathon this will allow us to increase the cap on the half marathon to 400 (in 2023 year event entry had to close when entrants reached the then cap of 345).
Other than that I do not expect any major changes, the course will remain the same through the beautiful Sussex countryside but, since we are only putting on the half marathon, the first checkpoint may be a bit earlier. And most importantly the mugs will still be waiting at the finish to be given out to the runners.
We are working closely with Stuart to allow for a smooth transition and will open entries as soon as we can: we do hope to have entries open before the end of October: if you can just bear with us whilst we get our feet under the desk. I will post here as soon as entries open.
Once again a big thank you to Stuart for the allowing us to be a part of this great race in the past to to now take it over going forward. Enjoy your retirement Stuart.
Looking forward to seeing many of you at next years event.
Graham West, Uckfield Runners 'the new' Race Director Weald Challenge.