The history of Podium 5k

An exclusive Q&A with Podium 5k founder and race organiser Chris Barnes, ahead of the SportsShoes.com Podium Festival in March

We’re now coming up to a decade since the first ever Podium 5k event took place (November 8, 2014), around the Steve Burke cycle track in Barrowford.

Chris Livesey – once the top-ranked U20 1500m runner in the UK – won that inaugural race and since then Podium 5k has gone from strength to strength.

Marc Scott stormed to a British 5km record with 13:20 at Barrowford in 2020 and Beth Potter also clocked an unofficial world record over the distance a year later, running an incredible 14:41.

Last year, SportsShoes.com acquired Podium 5k and the first event that took place after that announcement was ‘Breaking 10’, which saw Emile Cairess run 45:57 and smash Richard Nerurkar’s European 10 mile record of 46:02.

The philosophy behind Podium 5k is to “put the athlete first” and more than 50 non-profit races for affiliated and non-affiliated athletes have occurred since 2014.

Next on the list is the biggest project to date – SportsShoes.com Podium Festival on March 16.

The event will be held at New College Leicester, offers at £30,000 prize fund and involves attempts to break both British and European 5km records.

Here are the thoughts of Podium 5k founder and race organiser Chris Barnes.

How did Podium 5k start up and what were the inspirations behind it?

I was offered first refusal on a closed circuit pancake flat cycle track in Lancashire from a friend who was into cycling. I went down for a look and that’s where the crazy ideas all started.

Due to the arrival of parkrun a lot of the 5km races up and down the country had slowly disappeared. Due to the fact Podium 5k wasn’t set up to make profit, it meant I could host events breaking even at best. So I replicated the Tuesday night track meets at Stretford, graded the races and listened to athletes and coaches about races dates, plus put pacers in from the very first event. Chris Livesey won that very first event in 15:02 which at the time was deemed super quick. The dream was now reality.

How has Podium 5k evolved over the years?

From that first event back in 2014 up until when Sportsshoes.com took podium on, not much changed apart from its popularity.

Athletes turned up and paid their £5 at registration in an old, dark cold shipping container. I’d take costs out and the rest was prize money. I think the simplicity of it was part…