07 May 2010

runbritain is pleased to confirm that Intercontinental Hotels Group, which includes the Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express brands, will become the partner of the race calendar on the runbritain site. The website currently lists more than 2,000 UKA-licensed road races annually and the number of events using the runbritain at-cost online race entry service which was launched in the autumn is now approaching 100.

 Adrian White, Director of Parnerships for IHG said ‘We know that runners like to stay at our hotels when they travel to races and our UK-wide coverage means that we can give them options at the point where they are choosing their future racing programme. There are some very attractive races around the UK and we are very happy offer preferential rates to runbritain members at over 200 IHG hotels around the UK to help make a memorable experience of the whole weekend.’

runbritain MD, Geoff Wightman said ‘We are delighted to partner runbritain with a brand like the Intercontinental Hotels Group. Our online fixture list of future UKA-licensed races is extremely comprehensive and a great credit to the input of Tony Barden and Adam Thomas in compiling it in recent months. Being able to offer accommodation options for all of the events is a service that we believe runners and race organisers will welcome’

Following the recent launch of 60,000 road rankings,  this week runbritain.com has also announced that a total of 122,000 performances for UKA-licensed events this year at 5k, 10k, half marathon and marathon have been collected.

Furthermore runbritain continues to offer further enhancements to its service for race organisers including  guidance on how to prepare an event manual. This is now available on www.runbritain.com , the exclusive race director’s portal which can be accessed free of charge by all UKA licensed race organisers.

The guide was prepared by leading official Gavin Lightwood who was one of the international technical delegates at the 2010 IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Poland. He is also the race director for the Glasgow Women’s 10k and the Great Scottish Run and was the venues Manager for the World Cross Country in Edinburgh in 2008.

In addition to the event manual guide, runbritain is also supporting race organisers and the development of road racing in the UK, by developing a three-tier set of training and education courses. These will cover risk assessment, public partners, rules, legal, IT, marshals and health and safety issues. The first of these is expected to be piloted in the South West of England in the final quarter of this year.

The event manual guide is password protected and passwords can be obtained from athomas@uka.org.uk