Fell Running is a unique and diverse sport. It draws participants from a range of backgrounds and encompasses a wide range of events with over 600 races and challenges nationwide. Despite this Fell Running continues to fly under the radar with little active recruitment of new participants. While this has enabled the sport to develop a close community and a wealth of tradition, in recent years the sport has started to age with veterans being the norm at many races.
As a group, our experiences with the University of Sheffield running scene showed that there is a huge appetite for the sport amongst young runners. We realised that while the large spread of events offers great variety for the sport it can also spread the community of runners. We feel that, amongst young runners especially, a specific event is needed to bring us all together. Alongside there is often need to learn and develop skills to enable us to experience the wealth of adventures on offer at home and abroad.
We hope to develop the Youth Mountain Running Festival as an event to balance growth in the community and one offering opportunities to develop skills and experience.
Some participants may be interested in doing a Mountain Marathon, others might want to complete the Bob Graham, some may want to compete in the Lakeland Classic Fell Races or experience a wider variety of local fell races. We hope that this event will bring together a wide variety of interest offering the opportunity to meet other like-minded individuals you might not have in your own locality.
While we hope for great attendance at our event our measure of success will not be that, but instead positive growth outside of the event. Runners, having found new friends, experience and interests, heading off together to explore the mountains.
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Get in touch
Check out our Event Info and FAQ pages for more information.
More questions? If you want to get in touch, drop us an email at ymrfest@gmail.com or find us on facebook
YMRF 