New organising team for 10Peaks in 2017

The popular ultra-running 10Peaks events, that take place in the Lake District and Brecon Beacons each year, have a new organiser after a transfer of ownership by co-owners Mark Bottomley and Paul Smith to Ourea Events with immediate effect. 

The 10Peaks events are held in the Lake District (June) and Brecon Beacons (September) each year, with the first event held in the Lake District in 2010. Since then, the two events have built a loyal band of regular participants, and with the launch of the Brecon Beacons event in 2013 the series has gone from strength to strength. Each event features a long and short course that participants must navigate around (there are no waymarking or signs) with checkpoints on the ten highest peaks on the long course. 

With events like the Berghaus Dragon's Back Race®, the Cape Wrath Ultra® and Skyline Scotland® Shane Ohly and his team from Ourea Events have been steadily building a reputation for delivering world-class mountain running events in recent years, and this move puts the 10Peaks events in safe hands for the future. 

Ourea Events Race Director, Shane Ohly, was clearly delighted with the move, "I love the principle of the 10Peaks events; to visit the 10 highest mountains, with an emphasis on navigation and with a challenging yet beautiful route through the mountains. It is very much in keeping with my personal preference of the types of journeys I like to undertake in the hills.”

Shane Ohly also added, “The 10Peaks courses and format are rock solid, and we have no intention of changing these fundamental details of the event. During 2017, we plan to deliver very similar excellent events to those which Mark and Paul have organised in previous years.”

Mark Bottomley said, "The events have become such an important part of our lives that it is extremely hard to let them go! The history behind the Lakes race is incredibly personal to Paul, and the Brecon race was my creation, so we both have a real bond with them. BUT, the ever increasing demands of our day jobs mean that we cannot give the events our proper attention, so we had to seek a successor. It was an obvious choice for us about who to approach to take 10Peaks over, as the main priority was to hand over to someone that had the skills and experience to manage the events to at least the same standard that we had always strived for. It was all about finding a safe pair of hands that would continue with the same ethos and energy that we had. Having raced a few of Shane's events before, I knew Shane operated in a similar fashion and created events that were similar in style to ours.”

The dates for the 2017 10Peaks™ Lakes and Brecon events have now been confirmed and entries are OPEN:

•    Lake District 10Peaks™: Saturday 24th June 2017
•    Brecon Beacons 10Peaks™: Saturday 9th September 2017