Scott Beattie and Verity Ockenden lead line-ups for first HogmanHOWAY 5K

Elite and membership runners from the North East of England will race on December 31 with the occasion streamed dwell for many who cannot make it.

Among the North East’s finest membership runners will line up alongside different main British athletes in Newcastle on New Yr’s Eve.

Scott Beattie, who was fourth within the European Cross Nation Championships this month, Cameron Boyek of Morpeth Harriers and Calum Johnson of Gateshead Harriers head up the North East problem within the males’s race.

They are going to tackle British 800m medallist Alex Botterill, who will check himself in his first severe street 5km, together with Northern Eire worldwide James Gormley and up-and-coming Eritrean and Birchfield Harrier Aron Gebremariam.

Within the girls’s race, Verity Ockenden is anticipated to problem for the primary HogmanHOWAY 5K title, earlier than becoming a member of up with the British group for the World Cross Nation Championships within the USA in January.

Ockenden gained the Ribble Valley 10km on Sunday and right here will face competitors from Irish worldwide Roisin Flanagan, fellow British internationals Izzy Fry and Amelia Quirk, plus reigning British 1500m champion Sarah Calvert.

Native athletes Jasmine Wooden (Durham Metropolis Harriers), Elisha Tait (Gateshead Harriers) and Lydia Turner (Birtley AC) can even be within the combine.

The brainchild of North East athletics legend Steve Cram, the HogmanHOWAY 5K is sponsored by Develop North PLC and is being organised by Occasions of the North, in partnership with the North East Mixed Authority, North East Mayor Kim McGuinness and Newcastle Metropolis Council.

Beginning and ending on the Civic Centre, the elite males’s race will set off at 19:05, adopted by the ladies at 19:07, with each going down on a flat and quick three-lap course, providing loads of vantage factors for spectators. The mass HogmanHOWAY 5K will begin at 19:30, on a route that can absorb many native landmarks and which features a loop across the Northumbria College campus, one of many occasion’s key occasion companions.

“We’ve assembled a powerful area for the primary elite HogmanHOWAY 5K,“ mentioned Cram, „and each males’s and ladies’s races look set to be very aggressive and thrilling. There are many gifted native athletes for the crowds to cheer on and it is going to be nice to see how they fare towards some nice runners from elsewhere.

„It’s actually encouraging that we’ve been in a position to appeal to such a robust line-up for the elite races, and I hope that this helps to ascertain the HogmanHOWAY as an annual characteristic of the New Yr’s Eve programme in Newcastle.”

Round 2000 persons are anticipated to participate within the first HogmanHOWAY 5K, with many making early begin on their new yr’s resolutions to get match and lift cash for good causes, such because the occasion’s official charity accomplice, The Sir Bobby Robson Basis.

Entries shut on December 30. Extra information right here or watch the dwell stream from the races right here…