INVERNESS “4.62K” – SUNDAY MARCH 17th.

Club athletes and officials were among the first to realise on the day that the Inverness Fun Run on March 17th was well short of the advertised 5K distance. As a result, timings for our club road race championships were abandoned and several club members lost opportunities for Power of 10 rankings. This is completely unacceptable. Unfortunately the organsers, Caledonian Concepts Ltd, were initially in denial but eventually issued a statement admitting that a mistake had been made.

As a club we welcome this belated statement but would take the opportunity to highlight a range of unsatisfactory issues relating to the Inverness Half Marathon/ Fun Run and the Loch Ness Festival of Running which is organised by the same company.

It is especially disappointing that such poor value for money should be obtained from this Fun Run where the basic entry fee has tripled from £3 to £9 since the current organisers took it over in 2011. This highlights the overcharging which is widespread across this company’s running events and we believe that this is also causing entry fee inflation in other local races.

There has been further concern within the club since the event began around 10 years ago that the Loch Ness Festival is at the wrong time of year in early autumn. This means it is squeezing other longer established races run by athletics clubs which promote our sport 365 days a year as opposed to riding on its back for profit for just two.

We therefore believe that Sunday’s incident highlights rather wider issues concerning these profit making events which are operating to the disadvantage of competitive club athletics.