The Broughton Burn

The Broughton Burn is our flagship 10k event which first started in 2017. The race came into being as a way of remembering a lost relative (Jean Silvester) after her battle with dementia. Witnessing the terrible change in Jean as the disease progressed was so distressing that we wanted to do anything we could to help in the fight against the disease. At the time the now race director, had just started a running group called the Broughton Runners and creating Broughton it’s own event seemed like the perfect way to raise money for Alzheimer’s charities. And so, the Broughton Burn was born.

In 2017 we started the race as a mixed terrain race that started on road and then went into the woods, we weren’t able to secure full landowner permission for the route we wanted to use which forced us to shorten the distance from 10km to 7.5km. The event was held in conjunction with the Broughton in the Park festival and with 50 participants it was a modest start to the event which still raised a fantastic amount of money.

In 2018 we managed to find a route that was suitable enough for us to do the full 10km. The last couple miles being mainly uphill earned the race it’s tag line “Feel the Burn!”. The race still being in its infancy we received a very satisfactory 190 participants and raised even more money.

But 2019 was the year that really made the event, race director Steve had secured some additional funding from his workplace after organising some workplace motivational challenges which raised nearly £100k for various charities. Steve did everything he could with the extra funding to make the event feel top class. The participation again increased falling just short of 300 person capacity.