The GEF Safari Series, licensed by Scottish Athletics, gives runners the chance to compete over 3 different distances whilst also receiving a unique Kenyan safari animal medal at each event.
Entries for the 2023 series will open soon with race dates as follows:
The 2022 series raised an incredible £5,287 through the Drum Property Prime Four 3k, Mel's Union Street Mile in association with Celebrate Aberdeen and Baker Hughes and the Salus Technical Hazlehead 5k. Full event reports and results can be found below.
Prime Four 3k and kids 1k, sponsored by Drum Property Group
Thank you to the 75 runners, 30 volunteers and army of supporters who helped the 2nd edition of our Prime Four 3k and 1k races on Sunday 22nd May 2022 to raise £1,865!
We owe a big thank you to Drum Property Group for their generous sponsorship and to Keith Simon at Prime Four for his meticulous planning and support on the day. Grateful thanks also to Lewis from the Village Hotel, Dino the Dinosuar and Eddie the Elephant who teamed up to do a warm up for the kids before their 1k race.
Race results can be found here.
Mel's Union Street Mile with Celebrate Aberdeen & Baker Hughes
Thank you to the 83 runners and 25 volunteers who helped the Mel's Union Street Mile races to raise £2,421!
Huge thanks to Celebrate Aberdeen for believing in and giving us the opportunity to organise the races and to Baker Hughes for their generous sponsorship and enthusiastic volunteering on the day. Congratulations to the following safari animal themed trophy winners:
P5-7 race: 1st boy, Struan Mackay. 1st girl, Hayleigh Reid
S1-4 race: 1st boy, Kyle Gibson. 1st girl, Abby Farquhar
Adults race: 1st male, Adam Brown. 1st female: Julie Hoyle.
Additional congrats to Adam and Julie who were the fastest male and female of the day, scooping the Mel Edwards and Joan Wilson trophies respectively.
Race results can be found here.
Photos can be downloaded here thanks to Michal and Euan.
Hazlehead 5k, sponsored by Salus Technical
Thank you to everyone who took part and volunteered at the final race of our 2022 GEF Safari Series. We are delighted to have raised £1,001 from the event which will enable us to deliver life changing support to children and their families in Kenya. None of this would have been possible without the sponsorship from David Jamieson and the team at Salus Technical!
Well done to Paul Knight and Abby Farquhar who finished 1st male and 1st female respectively, taking home the vulture themed trophies. Race results can be found GEF Hazlehead 5k results
2021 Safari Series review
In 2021 we kicked off with Mel's Mile on Sunday 17th October at Aberdeen Sports Village - a series of paced and seeded track mile races on the track where Myles Edwards first met and raced alongside Gideon Gathimba back in 2009. Forty six runners across 4 races, 12 volunteers and many spectators were in great spirits despite the rainy conditions and all helped make the inaugural event a success.
Congratulations to Rhian Birnie (5 mins 52 seconds) & Ross Finlayson (5 mins 1 second) who were fastest female & male runners of the day & won the Joan Wilson and Mel Edwards Trophies respectively. Race results can be found here.
Next up in the 2021 series was the Hazlehead 5k which followed the same course as the Hazlehead Parkrun. We had 55 people take part on the day, with Sean Chalmers and Aimee Tawse finishing 1st male and 1st female respectively. Half of the £262 funds raised on the day made their way to local charity Friends of Hazlehead who do great work to maintain and improve the park. Full race results can be found here.
The final race of the series in December 2021 was the Prime Four 3k (with a 1k race for kids) kindly sponsored by Drum Property. 83 people flew round the fast and flat 3k road course at the Prime Four Business Park in Kingswells with Sean Chalmers recording his second win of the series and Chloe Gray scooping the trophy for 1st female.
Full race results are available here. An incredible £1,364 was raised from the races at Prime Four, which was greatly helped by Drum Property's sponsorship of the event medals and trophies.
We are delighted that the inaugural series as a whole has raised £1,748. Thank you to all runners, the 40 volunteers and Drum Property for making all of this possible.
