History of the Ivybridge 10K race

The first Ivybridge 10K was organised by Erme Valley Harriers in 1985, it then formed part of the Ivybridge carnival week celebrations and took place on the late May bank holiday. The race started and finished at the Erme playing fields and was a low key event with less than a 100 runners. The second 10K incorporated the Run the World event, which was a series of 10K runs held simultaneously all over the world to raise money for famine relief in Africa. Unfortunately a miscalculation meant our run started at 5pm, one hour later than everyone else. We had a total of 240 runners who finished that year, mostly locals.

The race then became an annual event in May over an undulating course held on a Saturday evening starting and finishing in the main street of Ivybridge. The direction of the course was changed to make it easier in the mid 90’s but was still known as a tough race. We decided to try and make the course easier and use the facilities of the Rugby Club. The race start was moved to the Station car park and the first race over this new course was held in 1997. There were 255 finishers that year and the feedback was positive. The race increased in popularity partly due to the pottery mugs, which were given out as the race memento.

In the Millennium year we had 470 finishers and plans for the 2001 runs were well in hand when the Foot and Mouth outbreak came along. We were forced to move the race to September (replacing the Beacon Challenge) but the date was not so popular with only 226 finishers, Thankfully we were able to return to our May date in 2002 and we had 433 finishers. This increased again in 2003 and in 2004 we reached the race limit before the race day. In 2005 we reached the entry limit 3 weeks before the event and had 486 finishers.

We have been fortunate with sponsorship and we are very grateful to our current sponsors DML Sports and Social and Arjo Wiggins for their support over many years.

We hope to grow the race in future years if we can resolve the logistical problems like parking and toilets but we do not want to jeopardise the organisation, which makes it such a popular race.