Sublime TWENTY4 - Covid-19 Update – 8th July 2020

Dear Participant,

Firstly, on behalf of myself and everyone at Sublime Racing, from our Course Director to our hundreds of wonderful Race Makers, I would like to say thank you. I hugely appreciate the ongoing support, understanding and patience you have given us, allowing us the time and space to fully evaluate all options for delivering the Sublime TWENTY4 this year.

I hope that you and your family are safe and well and have not been impacted by the covid-19 crisis. If you have been touched by this awful crisis, our thoughts are with you.

You may have seen last week that we postponed the Enervit Peterborough Marathon due to the ongoing Covid-19 situation. Rather sadly we have had to make the same very difficult situation with our Sublime TWENTY4 event.

The three main criteria upon which we have been monitoring the viability of the event from a Covid-19 point of view are as follows:

1. The Government would need to have removed all the restrictions on events with less than one thousand participants

2. The perception of the public and local residents would need to be such that it would be deemed ethical to run the event

3. We would need to be confident that it is safe to run the event for our staff, volunteers, runners and local residents

With a positive approach over the recent months we have progressed with our planning and contingencies with our stakeholders, including our sport’s governing body and Grafham Water, on the basis that should the ban on events be lifted we will be prepared and ready to stage the event.

With no clear understanding of when the Government will be able to lift this ban, it was impossible for our stakeholders to officially commit to the event and as such we were all progressing on a “What if” basis. Grafham Water have recently notified us of their official and understandable position of not hosting any events in August this year and as such it has removed any doubt for us as to whether to proceed with the hope that the ban may be lifted.

In addition to this, we have been continually assessing the implications the uncertainty has on our runners preparing for the event and we now feel we have reached the minimum period for which we should offer absolute assurance that the event will go ahead, and we are simply not able to do that.

We are also very conscious of ensuring the safety of our Team, Race Makers, and of course our runners, and whilst we have many plans to significantly reduce the risk of transmission, there is no doubt that delaying the race further will reduce that challenge.

We are also incredibly passionate about the standard of event that we host. If you have taken part in a Sublime event before you will know the level of detail that goes into every aspect of the day. We are concerned that this will be heavily compromised by many of the mitigations that would need to be implemented, such as the lack of baggage, catering, live music and the event village.

With all the above in mind, we have made the very difficult but hopefully understandable decision to defer the event to next year. The provisional dates are the 7th to the 8th of August 2021.

As Race Director of the Sublime TWENTY4, I would like to personally apologise to all of our runners and to the very special Sublime team, from the Directors to the Race Makers who are all volunteers, for the difficult challenges we have faced this year and to thank you again for your incredible support and understanding.

We will automatically transfer all participants to the new date and send you notification once this has been processed. Please allow some time for this to take place. If you are not able to attend the new date of 7th to the 8th of August 2021, please email info@sublimeracing.com any time between now and 7th of July 2021 and we will do our best to find an alternative event for you or to provide you with a Sublime Racing voucher to the same value.

If you have any queries or questions about the Sublime TWENTY4, would you kindly email info@sublimeracing.com and we will deal with all queries as quickly as possible.

Once again, thank you so much for your kind patience and understanding during this very difficult time.

Kind Regards

Martin & the Sublime Team.