Last year, Covid closed down the annual St Patrick's Day SPAR Craic 10K run through the streets of Belfast but this time around, organisers have vowed to outpace the pandemic by hosting thousands of solo runs around the globe.
Already, runners in countries as cities as far apart as Guadalajara, Mexico, and Shanghai, China, have signed up for the Patron Saint's Day race while up to 600 Belfast competitors are expected to set out alone or in pairs tomorrow.
A live broadcast will be screened from Belfast from 1-2:30pm tomorrow connecting with the global runners who are being encouraged to post photos or video after their Craic 10K or 5k run on the official Twitter account.
Among global participants Zoomed into the St Patrick's Day celebration live will be runners in New Zealand, Singapore, Belgium, Australia and the USA. Welsh, English and Scottish runners will also join hundreds across every county in Ireland. Said Aisling Events director Connla McCann: "The response from across the world was really overwhelming. St Patrick's Day is a very special occasion for the Irish and we were determined not just to hold this year's SPAR Craic 10K but to use the event to show solidarity with our global family at a time when Covid is keeping us physically apart. Amazingly, despite a plethora of online events on St Patrick's Day, the SPAR Craic 10K is the only event from Ireland which actually engages the diaspora. We plan to make March 17 a day to remember and then to return to the streets of Belfast in 2022 when, hopefully, we will left the pandemic in our wake."
ON YOUR MARKS: Fr Brendan Fitzgerald leads the Team Aisling runners in their early St Patrick's Day outing.
The biggest response to the 'virtual' run came from the Aisling running club in Yonkers, New York which registered over 100 participants — many of whom completed the run, in socially-distanced fashion, on Sunday in Tibetts Park in Yonkers. The running club's video report on the day, above, will be shown during the St Patrick's Day live show.
Registrations are still open — just — for the SPAR Craic 10K on the official website.
To watch the SPAR Craic 10k show, you can register for free here.
